The Earliest Hindu Temples

The Gupta Empire (c.240–c. 579) is often hailed as India’s ‘Golden Age’, yet it has left surprisingly few physical monuments compared to its predecessors, the Kushans.

For an empire that is credited with crystallizing so much of what we now consider “classical” India - its literature, science, and art - the lack of grand palaces and sprawling cities is striking.

And yet, what little remains of their architecture is nothing short of extraordinary.

Indeed they seem to have produced the earliest known stone Hindu temples ever discovered.

Earlier wooden ones have of course not survived the tests of time. Thus, these temples are the earliest Hindu monuments we will likely ever know of!

-Sam Dalrymple.