South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.2.3

c10.2.3

For although the images of Buddhist and Saivaite conceptions have many points of resemblance due to the idealistic treatment of the figure which is a common tradition in all schools of Indian art, the parent inspiration of the South Indian sculptors of the 8th to the 14th centuries must be sought for in the bas-reliefs at Mammallapuram which were executed probably between the 6th and the 8th centuries. The school of bronze workers executed a majority of their works between the 8th and the 15th centuries when, as we have found, the style flagged and entered into a period of degradation. Side by side with the works of the bronze image-makers there grew up a school of stone sculpture which culminated in a new stylistic development which we find recorded in the temples of Avadaiyar kovil, Korang-anadham temple at Srinivasnallur (Trichinopoly) and Tadpatri in the 16th century and the temples and their connected structures at Madura in the 17th century. The latter school displayed a freedom of style and conception which is quite different from the formalistic productions of the bronze workers unable to get over the stiff un-yielding immobility of types which the iconological formulas imposed upon them. The stone sculptors who decorated the *gopurams* and the exterior of the temples with statues and bas-reliefs illustrative of the various *pauranic* legends were less handicapped by any special forms of images prescribed in the text.