The Gupta age and classical India
Under the Gupta kings, north India sees a flowering of Sanskrit literature, temple art, mathematics and astronomy.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
From about 320 CE the Gupta dynasty ruled much of north India. Its era produced the poet and playwright Kalidasa, whose Shakuntala later enchanted Goethe; early free-standing stone Hindu temples; the Buddhist paintings of Ajanta; and the astronomer-mathematician Aryabhata (born 476), who calculated pi accurately and argued that the earth rotates. Indian mathematicians of this period and after developed the decimal place-value system with a symbol for zero.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
Historians such as Romila Thapar caution that “golden age” is a nineteenth-century nationalist label: the Guptas ruled only part of India, and the same era saw caste hierarchy and untouchability harden. In the South, dynasties such as the Pallavas and later the Cholas built equally brilliant civilisations.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
Why it matters today
Indians often call it a "golden age". The place-value decimal system with zero, which reached Europe through the Arabs as "Arabic numerals", and works like Kalidasa's plays are sources of national pride.