Part Two of a brilliant study of ancient Indian civilization For about a thousand years, from around the middle of the first millennium BCE, to around the middle of the first millennium CE, India was a prosperous and marvellously creative civilization. Cultural cross-fertilization and the stimulus of a Buddhist ethic, along with economic prosperity, had a liberating effect on the human spirit and on creativity. The season in India then turned spring, and culture blossomed luxuriantly. In Part Two of The First Spring (Culture in the Golden Age of India) Abraham Eraly unfolds a profoundly illuminating panorama, covering the sciences, philosophy, literature, the arts and religion, of an age that flowered luxuriantly before its inevitable decay.