DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2022.v10i09.003

Pages: 413-416

The fourth, fifth, and first half of the sixth centuries of the Christian era—the period known as the Imperial Guptas in India—present a religious landscape with intricate vertical and horizontal linkages. The Vedic rituals and gods are depicted in one section of this as standing at the pinnacle of several Brahmanical religious systems that are horizontally connected to one another. The non-Brahmanical systems are similarly depicted in a horizontal relationship with one another, but without the Vedic vertex, and running antagonistically opposite the Brahmanical ones, sharing in the new options provided by the prevalent element of folk and local cults involving the Yaksas, the veneration of sacred trees and rivers, etc. in the care of those who revere holy rivers and forests, etc. The Gupta kings used this perplexing substance to paint a harmonious scene on the canvas.