The features of Deccan sculptures are varied as with each dynasty the features of this style kept changing. The history of Deccan sculpture dates back to the Pallavas which presented a unification of both north and south Indian temple architectures. Precisely speaking this became the basic feature of Deccan sculpture with its inimitable provincial elements.

Sculptures in Ancient Deccan
The handful of Gupta shrines that still remain, many in a state of severe decrepitude, proves that a number of the distinctive facets on the Indian temple had evolved by then. They consist of a raised, normally rectangular platform, sometimes previously with the primary shrine in the centre and auxiliary shrines at the corners and a sanctum. The sanctums or garbhagrihas are almost customarily windowless and understated, encircled, in larger shrines, by an enwrapped ambulatory passage, often illuminated by stonegrilled windows to the outside, normally with an intricately carved entryway and in some cases introduced by a pillared hall. Many of these maturations can be seen in the Mahayana Buddhist caves in Ajanta and elsewhere.

Less is known about the superstructures of the early free-standing temples in brick or stone. From occasional illustrations on stone reliefs and on sealings, primarily the Kumrahar `plaque`, it is know that many-storeyed superstructures like the Mahabodhi Temple of Bodh Gaya (previous to its numerous renovations), possibly existed from Kushana times onwards.

The many temples built under the early Western Chalukyas between the end of 6th century and the end of the 8th offer significant landmarks in the maturation of the Hindu temple. A few 7th and 8th century temples remain elsewhere in India, but only on or near the banks of the Malprabha, in northwestern Karnataka, however, is such an aggregation to be found, and (what is even more stupefying) only here is it possible to see side-by-side, and already amply developed, temples of the `northern` Nagara kind and others in the Dravida mode of south India. The Nagara kind has a `tower` or shikhara of layer on layer of kapotas and gavasaka courses, crowned by a huge amalaka and with smaller ones inset at the nooks. The Dravida has increasingly smaller storeys encircled by small pavilions and coronated by a dome (shikhara) above a narrower throat.

The amalgamated trait of these temples is also apparent in particular facets of the early western Chalukya mandapa. These are connected to the front of the shrine proper, in alignment with one or two of the temples, alone allows one to glimpse a pretty long period of progress, a supposition to which the breakthrough of the remains of a brick pillared hall of probably Satavahana date, lends weight. Even so, the type has fractional parallels of early date elsewhere.

Buddhist doings have been discovered in Badami and Aihole, which possibly belong to the 6th century. These findings include the earliest excavated cave temples, structural temples, and sculpture for which there is more than excavated or secondary evidence, correspond with the accession to power of the early Western Chalukya in the mid 6th century, and are principally Hindu with a splashing of Jain monuments. The first significant king of the dynasty was Pulakesin I (c. 535-66), but it was Pulakesin II (610-42), who overpowered the great Habra of Kanauj and conquered Kanchipuram, the capital of the Pallavas. The Chalukya dominions also stretched to include Maharagra, the Konkan, the entire Karnataka (Carnatic) and possibly even Lara (Gujarat).

The early Western Chalukya temples can be separated into those of the late 6th, 7th and perhaps early 8th centuries in three diverse sites- Badami (ancient Vatapi), Aihole (ancient Ayyavolt) and Mahavira; and a `second generation` in the succeeding century, including some far bigger than any that had gone before, at Piratical. The classes are not absolute, and some temples in Aihole belong to the early 8th century. There are also the rock-cut Hindu and Jain temples at Badami, one of them (Cave III) an art-historical milestone because, alone among the caves, it is dated (578), and the lesser but equally exquisite cave-temples in Aihole, all with remarkable Deccan sculpture.

The daintiest of the early `southern` temples is the so-called Malaga Himalaya at Badami. Prototypal southern is the configuration of the vicinal. Its superstructure consists of stories with miniature solid pavilions, forming an unbroken parapet (hire) around the fundamental edifice, which concludes in a dome-like element, octagonal, circular or square, called a shikhara. The pavilions at the corners (kowhais) are square in design, with oblong ones with barrel roofs (salsa) in between, intermingled with paiijaras, protrusions topped by a huge chandrasala (gavasaka). Though both types of superstructure might infrequently house an upper shrine room, the storeys or tiers are not designed to afford interior space

From Badami, a pilgrim road, some of it on the sheet rock, distinctive of the region, leads over the hills to Mahakuta, an archetypal tirtha (holy site of pilgrimage). A Vijayanagara-period torana stands on the highland before the path drops down into a tiny glen between the hills where, clustered around a sacred tank fed by springs and surrounded by a wall, stands approximately 25 shrines, large and small, some with vimanas of the `southern` kind, some with `northern`-style shikharas, and one with a Kalinga superstructure of the same kind, similar to the Mallikarjuna at Aihole. The two biggest temples are the Mahakutesvara and the Mallikarjuna. Architectural features like Nagral are common to both temples.

The third significant site, with by far the greatest number of early temples, is Aihole. Aihole`s ancient status is witnessed however by the relics of a colossal city wall and its entryways, at times complete with merlons, the only such fortification to have outlasted from such previous times. Some Aihole shrines have uncomplicated `southern` domes, others again are simply miniature mandapas with an area partitioned off for the sanctum. The sculptures in these temples are intricately done. Temple 73 (Mallikarjuna), in plan a conservative early western Chalukya temple of the `first generation`, deserves citation, due to its Kalinga-type superstructure, a sequence of evenly spaced kapotas girding a straight-sided pyramidal tower with a hefty stone jar or kalaia on its top. The celebrated La Khan temple, possibly consecrated to Surya-Narayana, is one of the primary buildings of the early period.

The quite fertile sculpture of the `first generation` early western Chalukya temples is in a combination of styles, whose origins or parallels are to be found outside the region, proved with strong indigenous element, twinning the architecture but with no big relationships with it. Mysteriously enough, the two fine murtis of the Maleg Shivalaya are very close to early post-Gupta sculpture in the north- principally naturalistic, yet over stylish and somewhat unashamedly assertive. Weapons and symbols are assertively individual, the attendees elegantly mannered in the best Gupta tradition. A gentler and quite appealing early post-Gupta fashion marks the mithunas in temples as varied as the Lad Khan and the Durga. There is an irregular folk element, for instance, in the admired Asvamukha pillar sculptures, where the formal horse-headed yaksa is rowdily approached by the male figurine or stands modestly beside him.

The post-Gupta style is at its perfect and best, in some of the recess figurines of the peristyle inside the Durga temple, especially the Durga, and the Shiva. Naturalism has fundamentally been replaced by conception. Jewellery, for instance, is sculptural rather than realistic; attendee statuettes incline at unimaginable angles.

There is petite real evidence for Pallava influence. Pillars with huge standing figurines, normally mithunas here, belong eventually to the tradition of carved Buddhist stambhas, but in free-standing buildings they do not appear in the south until the late Chola period, long after Andhra and elsewhere. Ceilings richly carved with iconographic themes also remain solely early western Chalukya for a century or two, until they materialise in later post-Gupta temples in Rajasthan and in Orissa. On the borders of many are the Guardians of the Quarters, especially popular from then onwards in Karnataka. Standing Lakulisas are preferred and so are narrative friezes, normally of scenes from the Krishna legend. Those in the Upper Temple in the North Fort again possibly precede those at Osian by a couple of centuries.

Early Western Chalukya architecture reached the culmination of its second phase at Pattadakal. Queerly enough, of the four large temples constructed here in the first half of the 8th century, only one- the Papanatha, is Nagara, despite the prevalence of the type at Alampur, a 150 miles to the east. The three other temples are ingenuously Dravida. The earliest, called the Sangamesvara or Sri Vijayesvara after its constructor, Vijayaditya Satyasraya (696-733), does not even have a nasika, reverberating the nonexistence of an antechamber in the sanctum, whose walls are extraordinarily thick. The mandapa has moderately disappeared. From the outset, the luxuriously ornamented interiors of the temples of the Deccan drew upon their own cave convention and eventually on Gupta references, rather than upon Tamil Nadu, where, until a very late date, interiors are severely bare.

Of the four temples at Pattadakal with Nagara shikharas, by far the biggest is the Papanatha. The temple is noteworthy for udgamas over the recesses of the Rajasthan honeycomb kind, and for the Ramayana reliefs on the exterior walls, some bearing the signatures of the sculptors. They are irregularly replicated on the Virupaksa temple- sculptors thus working on two temples in wholly dissimilar traditions is the most striking evidence that the diversity of styles for which the region is noted, does not essentially presuppose discrete groups of stone carvers.

Rock cut caves at Ellora were also one of the common temple architecture in ancient Deccan. The sculpture of Kailasanatha temple is worth checking out. The unification of the north and south Indian temple features is evident in this temple architecture.

The early Rashtrakutas carried the technique into northernmost Deccan, but there is so far no verification of any structural temples there in the `southern` fashion of their grand rock-cut works in Ellora. Nor did this style continue as such even in central Karnataka, where so many excellent Dravidian temples had been erected under the early Western Chalukyas. By the end of 8th century, the origin could already be comprehended of Karnataka`s distinctive contribution to Indian temple architecture, which concluded in the later Hindu period, in the Hoysala fashion.

The outlasting shrines of the 9th and 10th centuries in southern Karnataka, generally linked with the Gangas, a local dynasty, are roughly provincial editions of late Pallava and early Chola types. These are well constructed, unblemished, but rather bleak, with a scarcity of external recess sculptures, despite some delicate images inside. In Kolar district to the east, the Ramesvara in Avani, incorporates four shrines, all but one with its own mandapa, and all but one side-by-side.

The sculptural tradition of Buddhist and Jain organisations in the northernmost coastal neighborhoods of Andhra continued to enlarge until the 9th and 10th centuries, growing closer to that of northern Orissa. The Buddhist sculpture of Amaravati, in the 8th century resembling the early Western Chalukyas, although at its best, is more forceful. These later went nearer to more northern fashions.

The eastern Chalukyas continued to rule over most of the coastal region of Andhra, until 12th century. Rather later shrines - the Bhimesvara at Godavari district, the Chalukya in Bhimavaram (east Godavari district), the Somesvara in Somarama (west Godavari district), and the Amaresvara in Amaravati and the Bhimesvara in Chebrolu (both Guntur district) - all possess two primary storeys, the last two with the ground floor closed and the lingam in the upper storey garbhagriha. They are made from sandstone, with white or black marble lingams. The shikharas continue in square, and the upper storeys of the vimana incline to be condensed, without haras, a quality of long standing in some Chalukya temples.

Sculptures in Deccan Sultanate
The sculptures in Deccan sultanate have been developed on the Indo-Islamic style. This style of architecture also evolved in Bengal, Gujarat ands Malwa besides Deccan, of course. It was the Bahamani Sultans who ruled over Deccan at that time. The monuments that they commissioned were in the purely the Deccan style. One of its finest examples is the Jama Masjid at Gulbarga built in 1367 A.D. There are no open courtyards here. In fact the whole structure is covered. The Bahamani architectural style, as it is often called, has been widely followed in the monuments of Bijapur. Gol Gumbaz and Charminar are some of the other splendid specimens of the Deccan style of architecture and sculpture.