India: A History. Revised and Updated (130 page)

Seated Buddha from Sarnath, fifth century
AD
.Such Buddhas of the Gupta period rank supreme. Found as far away as Borneo and Vietnam, they testify to the early diffusion of Indic culture.

Fresco of a Bodhisattva in Cave
I
at Ajanta, Maharashtra, fifth century
AD
. A religio-commercial centre under the Shatavahanas, Ajanta was extended and embellished with its world-famous frescoes under the Vakataka kings, allies of the ‘golden’ Guptas.

The early-eighth-century Shore Temple at Mamallapuram near Madras. One of the first structural temples in the south, it was built by Narasimha-varman II in what was then the main port of his Pallava kingdom.

The eighthcentury Kailasa temple at Ellora in Maharashtra. Cut from solid rock for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, it is not architecture but the world’s most monumental sculpture. ‘Oh, how was it that I created this?’ exclaimed its designer.

Man Singh palace in Gwalior fort, Madhya Pradesh, 1486-1516. Northern India’s most commanding fortress changed hands repeatedly. Occupants included numerous rajput clans, Delhi sultans, Mughals, Marathas, British and, in 1858, Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi.

Qutb Minar, Delhi. Celebrating the triumph of Islam, the world’s most massive minaret was begun beside Delhi’s first mosque by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, continued by Iltumish, and completed by Feroz Shah Tughluq.

Lingaraja temple, Bhuvaneshwar, Orissa, c.noo. Spectacular temple-building at Bhuvaneshwar, Khajuraho and elsewhere coincided with the triumph of Islam and may have been a response to it.

Interior dome of Adinatha (Vimal Vasahi) temple, Mount Abu, Rajasthan, eleventh-twelfth century. The Jain temples of Mount Abu, exquisitely fretted in white marble, belie the notion that Islamic conquerors habitually destroyed all temples.

Tughluqabad Fort, Delhi, 1321-5. Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq massively fortified his new Delhi but was forestalled in its enjoyment by his maligned son Muhammad bin Tughluq, ‘the Bloody Sultan’.

Daulatabad (Devagiri, Deogir) Fort, Maharashtra. A stronghold of the Seuna kings, Daulatabad became the springboard for Islamic raids into peninsular India and was briefly adopted by Muhammad bin Tughluq as his capital.

Hoysaleshwara temple at Dorasamudra (Halebid), Karnataka, mid-twelfth century. The Hoysala capital, first occupied by Muslim forces under Malik Kafur in 1310, was supposedly destroyed in 1326.

Babur and his son Humayun, sixteenth-century miniature. The Indian empire won by Babur, first of the six Great Mughals, was lost but eventually reclaimed by Humayun, the second Great Mughal.