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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Is it correct to say that the post-Gupta period was remarkable for expansion of religious cults in India?

  • UPSC 2023
  • Regional States during Gupta Era

The proposition holds, but only if "expansion" is read carefully — the post-Gupta centuries (roughly sixth to twelfth CE) did not invent Puranic sectarian worship from nothing; they took cults already visible under the Guptas and multiplied them across new regions, institutionalized them in stone through temple-building, and layered onto them a genuinely new devotional…

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What the full answer covers

  • Continuities from the Gupta Period: What Was Already There
  • Political Fragmentation as the Engine of Expansion
  • Growth of Sectarian Puranic Cults
  • Tantricism: A Genuinely New Register
  • Bhakti in the Tamil South: The Clearest Case of a New Mode
  • Temple-Building as Institutional Expression
  • …and 2 more sections, with a conclusion

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