European art—and a more restrained
use of color, both of which tend to give
the paintings a more lyrical feel.
Guna
(“quality”) A fundamental concept that
originated in the Samkhyaphilosophi-
cal school, but has become one of the
key ideas in the Hindu worldview. The
word gunaliterally means “strand,” and
by extension a “quality,” of which there
are believed to be three: sattva(“good-
ness”), rajas(“passion”), and tamas
(“darkness”). According to the Samkhyas,
in the time before the evolutionof
prakrti (primal matter), these three
qualities were in perfect equilibrium.
As mental activity began to disturb the
balance, prakrti evolved into the sub-
jective self and the objective world. All
things and beings in the world have
these three basic qualities, but their
nature and tendencies differ according
to the differing proportions. The quali-
ty sattva is always positive and carries
associations with goodness, truth,
wholesomeness, health, cognitive thought,
and deep-rooted religious life. The
quality tamas is always negative and is
associated with darkness, ignorance,
sloth, spoilage, and death. Rajas can
be either positive or negative,
depending on the context. It is nega-
tive when one becomes a slave to
one’s passions, blinding one to careful
and conscious thought. However,
one’s passions can also help to engen-
der activity and industriousness.
Although much of Samkhya meta-
physics has been long discredited, the
notion of all things drawing their ten-
dencies from the differing proportion of
these three gunas has become an
accepted part of Indian culture.
Gupta Dynasty
(ca. 350–550) Northern Indian dynasty
whose ancestral homeland was in the
lower GangesRiver basin. The Gupta cap-
ital was initially at Pataliputra, identified
with the city of Patna in the modern state
of Bihar, but was later moved to the city
of Allahabad, which lies at the conflu-
ence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
At its zenith under Chandra Gupta II,
the Guptas controlled all of northern
India and modern Pakistan, as well as
the eastern Coromandel Coast all the
way south to modern Madras. The
Gupta reign is associated with an efflo-
rescence of Indian culture, and with the
revival of Hinduism in northern India.
The force behind both of these trends
was the royal patronage of the Gupta
kings. According to tradition, one of
their court poets was Kalidasa, who is
considered the greatest Sanskritpoet.
The Guptas are also characterized as
ardent devotees (bhakta) of the god
Shiva, a devotion they displayed
through temple building and religious
endowments. Aside from Chandra
Gupta II, the dynasty’s most famous
rulers were his father Samudra Gupta
and his grandfather Chandra Gupta I.Guptakashi
(“hidden Kashi”) Village and sacred site
(tirtha) in the HimalayaMountains of
the state of Uttar Pradesh. Guptakashi
is located on the MandakiniRiver, one
of the Himalayan tributaries that com-
bine to create the GangesRiver. The
site’s charter myth is connected to the
Pandavas, the five brothers who are the
protagonists of the epic Mahabharata.
According to local legend, the Pandavas
went to Benares(also known as Kashi)
seeking an audience with the god Shiva,
but Shiva slipped away and hid in
Guptakashi. Guptakashi’s two holiest
sites are temples to Shiva. At one of
these temples, Shiva is worshiped in his
form as Vishvanath, the “Lord of the
Universe,” who is the presiding deityat
the most important temple in Benares.
The other is dedicated to his form as
Ardhanarishvara, in which the left side
of the image has female form, dress, and
ornamentation, whereas the right side is
male. The local claim that Guptakashi is
a “hidden” Kashi shows the fluidity of
the Indian sacred landscape, in whichGuptakashi