The third century offers a strange blank in Indian history.  Little can be said except that the power of the Kushans decayed and that northern India was probably invaded by Persians and Central Asian tribes.  The same trouble did not affect southern India and it may be that religion and speculation flourished there and spread northwards, as certainly happened in later times.  Many of the greatest Hindu teachers were Dravidians and at the present day it is in the Dravidian regions that the temples are most splendid, the Brahmans strictest and most respected.  It may be that this Dravidian influence affected even Buddhism in the third century A.D., for Aryadeva the successor of Nagarjuna was a southerner and the legends told of him recall certain Dravidian myths.  Bodhidharma too came from the South and imported into China a form of Buddhism which has left no record in India.

7. Revival of Hinduism

In 320 a native Indian dynasty, the Guptas, came to the throne and inaugurated a revival of Hinduism, to which religion we must now turn.  To speak of the revival of Hinduism does not mean that in the previous period it had been dead or torpid.  Indeed we know that there was a Hindu reaction against the Buddhism of Asoka about 150 B.C.  But, on the whole, from the time of Asoka onwards Buddhism had been the principal religion of India, and before the Gupta era there are hardly any records of donations made to Brahmans.  Yet during these centuries they were not despised or oppressed.  They produced much literature[18]:  their schools of philosophy and ritual did not decay and they gradually made good their claim to be the priests of India’s gods, whoever those gods might be.  The difference between the old religion and the new lies in this.  The Brahmanas and Upanishads describe practices and doctrines of considerable variety but still all the property of a privileged class in a special region.  They do not represent popular religion nor the religion of India as a whole.  But in the Gupta period Hinduism began to do this.  It is not a system like Islam or even Buddhism but a parliament of religions, of which every Indian creed can become a member on condition of observing some simple rules of the house, such as respect for Brahmans and theoretical acceptance of the Veda.  Nothing is abolished:  the ancient rites and texts preserve their mysterious power and kings perform the horse-sacrifice.  But side by side with this, deities unknown to the Veda rise to the first rank and it is frankly admitted that new revelations more suited to the age have been given to mankind.

Art too enters on a new phase.  In the early Indian sculptures deities are mostly portrayed in human form, but in about the first century of our era there is seen a tendency to depict them with many heads and limbs and this tendency grows stronger until in mediaeval times it is predominant.  It has its origin in symbolism.  The deity is thought of as carrying many insignia, as performing more actions than two hands can indicate; the worshipper is taught to think of him as appearing in this shape and the artist does not hesitate to represent it in paint and stone.