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Gupta Sculptures

The Gupta Empire was ruled by the Gupta dynasty during the period of around 240 to 550 B.C and it is truly marked as the Golden age of Indian culture and art. The examples showing the excellence of their cultural creativity are magnificent through the creative architecture, sculpture, and painting. Even various subjects covering science, astronomy, religion, and philosophy had reached to the level of excellence during this period. The peace and prosperity existed in the empire under leadership of Guptas enabled artists to deliver their best. The creation of monumental temples during the Gupta period remains as architectural wonders. The cave temples of Elephanta and structural temples of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu are enduring legacy Gupta rulers. The art of the Gupta Empire mainly includes:

Buddha PadmapaniThe Ajanta Sculptures: The sculptures & wall paintings at the Ajanta cave are marvelous example of the greatest and most powerful works of Guptas. The themes of sculptures and paintings from the Ajanta depict the various lives of the Buddha. The colorful and vibrant art pieces at Ajanta are famous not only for observing details of nature and the urban landscape, but the architecture and furnishing, elegant attire and alluring ornaments on the images are marked with importance. These sculptures carry importance for showing perceptive delineations of a variety of human characters, expressions and moods through its appearance. The most well known work from the Ajanta caves is the "Bodhisattva Padmapani, which is a colorful image portraying the Buddha in Bodhisattva holding a lotus flower.

The Elephanta Sculptures: The masterpiece of Gupta`s art is the rock temple at Elephanta near Bombay. The temple structure contains a powerful, eighteen-foot statue of the three-headed Shiva, known as Trimurti. Each head of statue represents one of the roles of Shiva: a creator, preserver and a destroyer. This statue shows the excellent skills in rock carving. The Gupta period also saw dynamic building of Hindu temples that followed the tradition of having architecture that comprising of a hall and a tower.

TrimurtiAll the sculptures produced throughout the Gupta Empire can be marked for having the appearance of relatively uniform "classic" style. The style was spread in other parts of India and in the countries of South and Southeast Asia. The Gupta style in sculpturing has greatly influenced the art of north Indian kingdoms in later period after the end of the Gupta dynasty. There were two main artistic centers for sculpture production: At Sarnath, the images of Buddha with clinging drapery are produced while at Mathura the image following the pattern of string folds in the drapery are created. Unfortunately, very few monuments built during Gupta reign are able to survive today. Some more examples of presentation of Gupta architecture are found in the Vaishnavite Tigawa temple at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, which is built in 415 CE and another temple at Deogarhnear Jhansi, which is built in 510 CE. Similarly, at Bhita in Uttar Pradesh has a number of ancient Gupta temples, most of them are in ruins.

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