The Gupta creation of the classical icon of the Buddha is a landmark in the art of Asia for like the Padmapani of Ajanta, it radiated to many lands. This age also created magnificent sculpture on Hindu themes like the incarnations of Vishnu in the late fifth century temple of Deogarth and the powerful representation of the boar incarnation salvaging the earth, hewn from the rock at Udayagiri.

The Vakatakas of the Deccan were the contemporaries of the Guptas and under their patronage fine sculpture came up in abundance, mostly Buddhist at Ajanta, Hindu at Ellora. The achievement has great range, from the lightness of flying figures and the elegant rhythmic balance of dancing groups such as the one at Aurangabad to the majesty and wealth of symbolic meaning of the figure Mahesa at Elephanta.

The Western Chalukyas continued these trends, creating floating figures and dancing Sivas at Badami, Alhole and Pattadakkal. The Eastern Chaluukyas also created some fine sculptures of dance in the temples of Vijayawada region.

In the eighth century, the Rashtrakutas carved a whole hill of rock at Ellora to simulate a structural temple and people it with sculpture on the exploits of Siva which share the turbulent power of their unique architectural achievement. The Gujara-Pratiharas who were their contemporaries evolved a less turbulent though still monumental style in such creations as the cosmic form of Vishnu, created poetically sensitive sculptures like the one shnowing the wedding of Siva and Parvati and contributed one of the loveliest dryads in the Indian tradition.

The Gahadvalas continued this tradition and the twelfth-century head from Rajorgarh is probably the best Indian sculpture for the most elegant representation of feminine coiffure. This trend of exquisite feminine figuration climaxed in the epoch of the Chandellas (tenth of twelfth centuries). The eroticism of Khajuraho sculptures has unfortunately attracted undue attention all over the world.

But far more sensitive in modelling and poetic in sensibility are the representations of woman in her various moods of longing, expectation, reverie. Eroticism is found in the sculptures of Konarak and Bhuvaneshwar of the epoch of the Eastern Gangas (thirteenth century) too.

 The great achievement of the Pallavas (8th century) was the gigantic tableau at Mahabalipuram where a whole rock face has been carved into a representation of the descent of the Ganga and the teeming  animal and human life on its banks. There are some exceptionally fine and deeply sympathetic studies of animal life here.

Siva is the towering figure in Chola sculpture (eleventh and twelfth centuries) in stone besides bronze. But it is the work in bronze, especially the Natarja of dancing Siva, that has become world famous, and deservedly so. Under the Hoysalas (twelfth century) the Karanataka region created a sculpture where the soft chloristic schist used attempted rather excessive detail and ornamentation. In the sixteenth century, Vijayanagar favoured a sculpture that reflected imperial pomp in elephant processions, cavalcades, marching soilders. Stone sculpture influenced by the Pallava tradition and bronzes influenced by the Chola style were produced in Kerala, but its unique achievement is in sculpture in wood.

Indian sculptors today are experimenting in all styles, using new materials like steel and aluminium, fibre-glass and even fibre. But the most significant trend seems to be the one which seeks to recover the iconic quality, the power to stir the impulses of awe and a duration which are humanistically the most valuable strains of the Indian sculptural heredity.