[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Architecture and art](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art) › [South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915) › c10.2.3 # South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.2.3 South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.2.3 - **Language:** English ### [c10.2.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.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. - [Previous: c10.2.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.c10.2.2) - [Next: c10.2.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.c10.2.4) - [Up: c10.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.c10.2) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.c10.2.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.gangoly-1915.c10.2.3) · Pramāṇa