Golden Age of India

(noun)

A period at the height of the Gupta Empire, marked by extensive inventions and discoveries that contributed to Hindu culture, in subjects such as science, technology, engineering, art, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astronomy, religion, and philosophy.

Related Terms

Examples of Golden Age of India in the following topics:

  • The Golden Age of India

    • The prosperity of the Gupta Empire produced a golden age of cultural and scientific advancements.
    • This period became known as the Golden Age of India because it was marked by extensive inventions and discoveries in science, technology, engineering, art, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astronomy, religion, and philosophy.
    • Other scholars of the Golden Age helped create the first Indian numeral systems with a base of ten.
    • The cultural creativity of the Golden Age of India produced magnificent architecture, including palaces and temples, as well as sculptures and paintings of the highest quality.
    • The Golden Age of India produced many temples, decorated with various sculptures and paintings, such as the Dashavatara Temple, also known as the Vishnu Temple, in central India.

  • Gupta and Post-Gupta

    • After the fall of the Mauryan Empire in the 2nd century BCE, India had remained divided in a number of disparate kingdoms.
    • During the late 3rd century CE the Gupta family gained control of the kingship of Magadha (modern-day eastern India and Bengal).
    • The period of Gupta rule is known as the Golden Age of India, as it was a time marked by unprecedented prosperity and the flourishing of the arts and sciences in India.
    • In the year 480 CE, the Huns launched an invasion of India.
    • However, the Gupta Empire and the Golden Age of India would not be forgotten.

  • Buddhist Wall Paintings

    • Buddhist wall paintings could be traced back to the Gupta period and were one of the dominant art forms of the early medieval period in India.
    • After the fall of the Mauryan Empire in the 2nd century BCE, India had remained divided in a number of disparate kingdoms.
    • The period of Gupta rule is known as the Golden Age of India, as it was a time marked by unprecedented prosperity and the flourishing of the arts and sciences in India.
    • Islamic invasions in India began as early as the 8th century, and by the early 12th century, almost all of northern India had been conquered.
    • The Hindu kingdoms of medieval India fell easily to the Islamic invaders, and soon the majority of India was under varying degrees of Islamic control.

  • Rise of the Gupta Empire

    • Chandragupta married princess Kumaradevi from the Kingdom of Magadha, which was one of the Mahajanapadas (or great countries) of ancient India during the 4th century CE.
    • By 395 CE, his control over India extended coast-to-coast.
    • At the high point of his rule, Chandragupta II established a second capital at Ujjain, the largest city in the modern state of Madhya Pradesh in central India.
    • The period of Gupta rule, especially the reign of Chandragupta II, is still remembered as the Golden Age of India.
    • The Iron Pillar of Delhi, India, erected by Chandragupta II to honor the Hindu god Vishnu, in the 4th century CE.

  • The Rise of Hinduism

    • During the reign of the Gupta Empire (between 320-550 CE), which included the period known as the Golden Age of India, the first known stone and cave temples dedicated to Hindu deities were built.
    • Through the period of the Raj, until its end in 1947, there was a Hindu resurgence, known as the Bengali Renaissance, in the Bengal region of India.
    • In the 20th century, Hinduism gained prominence as a political force and source of national identity in India.
    • According to the 2011 census, Hindus account for almost 80% of India’s population of 1.21 billion people, with 960 million practitioners.
    • Diwali decorations in Little India are part of an annual Hindu celebration in Singapore, where there are over 260,000 Hindus.

  • The Islamic Golden Age

    • Abbasid leadership cultivated intellectual, cultural, and scientific developments in the Islamic Golden Age.
    • During the Golden Age, the major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education.
    • Ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and woodwork flourished during the Islamic Golden Age.
    • Scholars developed large encyclopedias of medical knowledge during the Islamic Golden Age, such as this one from a manuscript dated circa 1200.
    • Identify the causes of, and developments during, the Islamic Golden Age

  • Vedic and Upanishadic Periods

    • The Vedic period in India (c. 1700 - 500 BCE) is marked by the composition of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.
    • The end of Vedic India is marked by linguistic, cultural, and political changes.
    • After the end of the Vedic period, the Mahajanapadas period in turn gave way to the Maurya Empire (from c. 320 BCE), considered to be the golden age of classical Sanskrit literature.
    • The reconstruction of the history of Vedic India is based on text-internal details.
    • This is the time of the early Iron Age in north-western India, corresponding to the black- and red-ware (BRW) culture.

  • Bronze Age Advancements in Metallurgy

    • An important development of the Bronze Age was the evolution of metallurgy, which resulted in the discovery of bronze.
    • In approximately the fourth millennium BCE in Sumer, India, and China, it was discovered that by combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze, representing the beginning of the Bronze Age.
    • In the Bronze Age, two forms of bronze were commonly used.
    • Two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later.
    • A hoard of axes from the Bronze Age found in modern Germany.

  • Luxury Arts

    • Islamic luxury arts of the later Middle Ages were particularly distinguished in the Mughal Empire (India) and in Egypt under the Mamluks.
    • The series of hard stone daggers in the form of horses' heads is particularly impressive.
    • Sixteenth century Egypt, under the Mamluks patronage of luxury arts, favored primarily enameled glass and metalwork and is remembered as the golden age of medieval Egypt.
    • The Baptistère de Saint-Louis in the Louvre is an example of the very high quality of metalwork of this period .
    • The Baptistère de Saint-Louis is an example of the very high quality of metalwork in the late Middle Ages.

  • Athens

    • Athens attained its Golden Age under Pericles in the fifth century BCE and flourished culturally as the hegemonic power of the Hellenic world.
    • The fifth century BCE was a period of Athenian political hegemony, economic growth and cultural flourishing sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of Athens.
    • The latter part of this time period is often called The Age of Pericles.
    • With the empire's funds, military dominance, and its political fortunes as guided by statesman and orator Pericles, Athens produced some of the most influential and enduring cultural artifacts of Western tradition during what became known as the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, or the Age of Pericles.
    • Pericles was arguably the most prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens during its Golden Age.