The Imperial Guptas And Their Times Cir Ad 300 550

History of Indian during the times of Gupta dynasty, 4th-6th century.

The book is a survey of the rise and downfall of India with specific reference to the effect of political and social conditions on its educational system. The course of the low percentage of educated population today can be traced in the neglect of education by fanatic Muslim rulers and wrong policy of education wilfully adopted by Britishers.

Pauranic Prana-aesthetics, a finer shade different from that of vitalistic aesthetics )the earlier having breathing-rhythm of Ksaya-Vrddhi --diminuation and augmentation--other than the latter`s emphasis only on the rhythm of augmentation), has been delineated in this study with examples from the world`s two of the best art-monuments: Ajanta (India), now not remaining unknown even to the most casual connoisseur, and Sopocani (Yugoslavia), the most significant and monumentally beautiful work of Byzantine art. Tracing Prana-aesthetics as the aesthetics of inner-light coded in the creeper-motif by the artists of Ajanta, this work emphasises decoding of the creeper-motif by Byzantine artists culminating into the frescoes of Sopocani done in Hellenistic-Byzantine aesthetics beatifield by Hesycast meditation to which that of Buddhists was not unknown. Comparisons of various determinant aspects, aesthetics and artistic denominators, and constraints not allowing similar consummation are properly investigated to substantiate the thesis that Prana-aesthetics transfigures at Ajanta but transubstantiates at Sopocani. The significance of the anabolic aspects of this aesthetics is highlighted especially as a way out from the reductivistic tendencies of the present day visual-arts straining them upto the stage of catabolic dissolution.

Part 1 deals with the life of Prof. A.L. Basham and his 80 letters addressed to the author. Part 2 covers the `colourful complexities of early Indian political, socio-economic, religious and cultural life', (p. xi).

Historiographical study of ancient Indian history.