THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GUPTAS 279 and it is even possible that he was a courtier of one of Chandragupta's satrap predecessors; but popular tradition certainly appears to be right in placing the greatest of Indian poets in the age of which Vikrama- ditya is the most conspicuous political figure. To the same age probably should be assigned the principal Puranas in their present form, the metrical legal treatises, of which the so-called Code of Manu is the most familiar example, and, in short, the mass of the " classical " Sanskrit literature. The patronage of the great Gupta em- perors gave, as Pro- fessor Bhandarkar observes, " a general literary impulse, " which extended to every department and gradually raised Sanskrit to the position which it long retained as the sole literary language of Northern India. The decline of Buddhism and the diffusion of Sanskrit proceeded side by side, with the result that, by the end of the Gupta period, the force of Buddhism on Indian soil had been nearly spent and India, with certain local excep- tions, had again become the land of the Brahmans. The literary revolution was necessarily accompanied by corresponding changes in the art of architecture. The forms of buildings specially adapted for the PUT- BATHING -PLACE AT UJJAIN.
