Page 23 - SST Class 07

languages spoken by the common people.
Apabhramsha literally means something which is
broken or crooked and referred to the languages
of the people as against classical Sanskrit which
was the language of the educated higher caste.
The early forms of Marathi and Gujarati were
being spoken in western India and Bengali in
eastern India.

ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
Every important king and every powerful feuda-
Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho
tory built a temple. There are many hundreds of
temples, small and big, which belong to this of mural painting continued to be used to deco-
period. In Orissa, the more impressive looking rate the walls of temples and places. There was
ones are those at Puri and Bhubaneswar and the another type of paintings which was to become
Sun Temple at Konark. extremely popular in the later period of Mughals.
This was miniature painting, that is, painting
small pictures as illustrations to books. The Jaina
monks of western India and the Buddhists in
Nepal and eastern India were very fond of
illustrating their manuscripts. They painted small
pictures on the palm-leaf page showing the
scenes described in the text. At first, the pictures
were simple, but slowly they began to put in
more and more details and colours, until each
picture became a fine painting in itself.

Lingaraj Temple, Bhubaneswar The period from 800 AD to 1200 AD saw many
changes in the social and economic life of the
The temples at Khajuraho in central India were
people. These changes created a new pattern of
built by the Chandella kings. Rajasthan and
living. It was also the period which saw similar
Gujarat also boasted of many fine temples. At
things happening in north and south India. This
Mount Abu (in Rajasthan), there is a group of
Jain temples built in white marble. Most of the
temples were dedicated to either Shiva or
Vishnu.
The Pala kings were patrons of Buddhism and
Hinduism. Their religious buildings were orna-
mented with images of various deities either
made of bronze or carved from a local black
stone. Many of these images have been found in
the neighbourhood of Nalanda.

Apart from architecture and sculpture, the art of Pillars of Jain Temple,
painting was also practiced. The older tradition Mount Abu

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