The fountainhead of Kashmiri sculpture is the vast valley, watered by the Jhelum, approximately 70 miles long and girded on all sides by mountains, and especially the region around Srinagar and Dal Lake. As its sculpture is pretty similar to the Swat Valley to the west, they are generally considered together. Kashmir and Nepal are identical in being unmanageable to access and in possessing prosperous schools of sculpture in metal and stone and a distinguishable fashion of architecture; they disagree in the historical and geographical elements, singular to Kashmir, have always given a varied cosmopolitan spirit to its extremely individual art. The Graeco-Roman reverberations which sound infrequently and seemingly enigmatically in the art of Kashmir and especially its architecture, can be traced only to Gandhara. The time gap is hard to enlighten but not impossible, if one takes the view that Gandhara art, on its home ground, prevails throughout the 6th century.

The earliest outliving monuments in Kashmir, predominantly only in ground level, are the remains of the Buddhist administrations at Ushkur and Harwan. The Ushkur stupa bases and sculpture are reflections of the late Gandhara period to the west At Harwan, around the 4th and 5th centuries, however, the quite extraordinarily crude masonry of early Kashmir, was clothed in a fresh and unequalled manner- the chaitya hall conceivably, and definitely the court around it with its elevated border upon which the monks could sit, were sheltered with tiles, some large , bearing moulded ornamentation, including Indian and Sasanian themes and possibly some Chinese motifs as well as human figurines.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, likely under the influence of the huge Lalitaditya of the Karlwra dynasty, who commanded widespread territories of central Asia and India, especially monumental cut-stone architecture appears. At Parihasapura, northwest of Srinagar, the remains of an immense stupa and a whole complex of Buddhist buildings demonstrate the fresh proficiency. The stones are often of grand size, including a breathtaking one, measuring 16 x 14 x 5 ft 6 in. (4.9 x 4.3 x I.7 m.) and weighing roughly 64 tons (65 tonnes). The blocks are evenly clothed and fastened by lime mortar (a practice exceedingly unusual in India until the advent of the Muslims) or by metal dowels. The so-called chaitya, a court with a central temple for the image, deduces in part from Gandhara and Buddhism, persists to co-exist, at least until the Muslim subjugations and images become more and more syncretic. The singular Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from Parihasapura, now in the Srinagar Museum, are in a variation of the early post-Gupta style. One or two certainly portray Chinese influence.

On the top of the Takht-i-Sulaiman hill, adjacent to Dal Lake and hence seen, if only from far, by every tourist, the Shankaracharya temple is extraordinary. It square design, with niched sides, and circular garbhagriha, would seem to suggest that it is the oldest surviving Hindu shrine in Kashmir, exemplifying a very early stage of development. The immense temple of the Sun at Martand, marvellously located near where the Liddar Valley opens into the vast Vale of Kashmir, is the biggest of the Hindu temples. It shares with a number of tinier, but less ruined shrines, the trefoil-arched niches, entryways, and recesses underneath precipitously pitched triangular pediments, as well as the fluted columns and pilasters with a capital, syncretism between Buddhist and Hindu images. Later icons incline to be smaller and carved in a richly smoothened black chlorite. The `archetypal` Kashmiri Hindu image is a four-armed standing Vishnu, flanked by his embodied weapons, and with a miniature bust of the earth-goddess (Bhii Devi ), rising from a lotus at his feet. The god is four-faced (caturanana), with a boar`s head and a lion`s on both sides, and another head in low relief on the back of the halo. Sadashivas are also common. The sculpture from Pandrethan appears to span several centuries. The several vast and generally unpublished sandstone images in the Srinagar Museum, including some standing Matrakas, a Sadashiva, and a comical Kamadeva, in a sprightly, slightly fruity fashion, are possibly contemporary with the Sun temple (8th century).

The post-Gupta bronzes of Kashmir are well authenticated in literary sources of the time. Since so many are now known, their distinctivenesses can be compiled with some confidence. In style they roughly resemble the works in stone. Central Asian and Sasanian reverberations, vary from `vague reminiscences of the animal style` to textile forms on throne cushions. Repeating items of dress, including the camail, a three-pointed tiny cape or bolero with an astoundingly long history, and an unexplained disc on each shoulder, point to elements of central Asian origin- possibly the Sahis- among the population.

The posture and fabric of the few standing Buddhas reflect Gandhara renderings in stone, though other characteristics appear to point at a very late date. The first undeniably Kashmiri bronze known- the 6th century Vishnu in Berlin, is, like the stone Kartikeya in Srinagar, a Gandhara-Gupta blend. It must be early on account of the lion`s and boar`s heads, sprouting from the shoulders, rather than from each side of the god`s face, and because there is no fourth face at the rear. The fabric of the dhoti, the moustached face, the crown, and the lotus in the god`s right hand all possess Gandharan parallels. On the other hand, the cakrapuru with his immense wheel is a wholesome Gupta. The tiny torso of the earth-goddess on the plinth, later practically the trademark of Vishnus in stone, the dynamically muscled torso and the vaguely dropsical legs, all relate this statue to later Kashmiri bronzes.

The greatest appeal of these works, lies possibly in their diversity. The ingenuity of the Kashmiri bronze casters during the Karkot period (8th to 10th centuries) seems little less; they are relentlessly inventing new and inventive forms of bases and aureoles and new iconographical groupings, undoubtedly modelled, cast and completed pieces to the most slapdash productions with roughly moulded faces and no attempt to finish the back of the image.

Vishnu is depicted in several pretenses, on occasions seated on his vehicle, Garura, or in a rare androgynous form (Vasudeva Kamalaja). Buddhas too sit either in European manner; or else in padmasana or lalitasana, with one leg pulled up, the other dangling down, on a wicker stool above the striking Kashmiri lotus with its smooth, fully rounded petals; or on a lion throne; or on cushions with textile motifs; or on a base elaborately carved with rocky forms in the Gupta fashion and populated with animals, devotees and donors. By the 8th century he had become coronated, appareled and sequined, sitting in a sophisticated bronze (in the John D. Rockfeller, 3rd collection), between twin stupas, a central Asian, rather than an Indian iconographical characteristic. The base and the lotus stalk supported by a pair of nagas, on then other hand, are Gupta. The modus operandi harks back the art of the jeweller, compared to that of the bronze caster or the modeller in clay.

The biggest of all Kashmiri bronzes so far known, 35 inches (90.5 m) in height, is the standing Buddha in the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was once property of a high luminary in Tibet.

The biggest accomplishment of Kashmiri metal image making, however, is an extraordinary idol, an authentic metal arch, surrounded by the avatars (manifestations) of Vishnu, framed in the loops of an incessant swirling lotus tendril. At the zenith stands a multi-headed Vishnu, with a seated Shiva underneath. The foremost image is absent. It was evidently seated, from the inner contours of the frame, and might have been the Buddha, considered by this time, one of the avatars of Vishnu.

The inventiveness and diverseness of the Kashmiri artists, sometimes at the price of taste, illustrate the post-Gupta fashion elsewhere, too, as does an affection for presenting textiles. The cult of the `foreign` god Surya was admired in Kashmir, as perceived by the Sun temple, and his images flourish, generally to a strict iconographic and stylistic formula, whether in stone or bronze. The Cleveland Surya, however, in conformity with the Kashmiri brilliance, resembles none of them. Instead of an exclusive lotus, the god holds a bunch in each hand; the crown and robe are both inimitable, both adorned with central Asian or Iranian cloth patterns, the robe flaring out in a most unexpected manner at the bottom. Arresting rather than attractive, this statue nonetheless communicates the image of kingship in these foreign regions better than any other sculpture, excluding that of Kanishka.

A number of Buddhas in padmasana, like all figurines from the northwest portrayed seated in a yogic posture, may also possibly be attributed to the Swat Valley. The right hand sweeps low in varada (conferring a boon); the left hand holds up the robe with the squeezed and dangling down. Elbows held tight to the body with forearms and hands turned faintly outward establishes an open-armed impression. Several of the Swat Valley bronzes are pretty dark in colour and have visibly narrower faces compared to their Kashmiri counterparts.

The only Kashmiri image which can be dated with some accuracy, is the LokeSvara consecrated during the reign of Queen Didda (c. 980-1003). It portrays that, by the beginning of the 11th century, modifications of style had taken place. Most remarkable in the more complex petals of the bases, with swollen stamens, but also in the diminished bountifulness of modelling, and in the worsening in craftsmanship. Many of the later bronzes may in fact have arrived from western Tibet, or else the western Himalayas or the Indian Hill States. Noteworthy exclusions to a specific decline in quality are the spectacular bronzes, all 3 to 4ft (90120m.) in height, from the old Chamba state, and broadly in situ. The temples here are in a local fashion, with high-pitched roofs. The deficiency of stone explains both their wooden construction and the fact that the master images are made form bronze. There are tiny, more or less conservative post-Gupta temples in Jagesvar, Bajaura, Mandi, Lakhamandal, Dvarahat, and other places in the Indian Hill States. Some of the stone sculpture is quite delicate, in a style connected to early Nepal.

South of the Vale of Kashmir, Akhnur in Jammu has created a number of miniature terracottas, mostly severed heads, possibly of the 6th century. There is little proof in Punjab and northwestern Pakistan, the chief assault route into India, of the monuments, which once have subsisted in plenty after the ultimate eclipse of Gandhara. Some statues and remains in white marble, the finest Ganesha in Kabul, have been attributed to the Hindu Sahis. The few temples to have outlived farther south, in or near the unusual geological construction known as the Salt Range, are either much rejuvenated or- like Malot, lonesome on its terrific site- nearly in ruins. Malot, with its gateway and fluted columns, bears clear similarities with the Kashmir style, with an added factor of rococo drama. Another group in Dera Ismail Khan district forms an expansion into northwest India of the architecture of post-Gupta Madhyadesa. It includes- all in pretty dilapidated condition- the temples at the two Kafir Kots and the Kallar temple in Attock district, the very last in brick, the others in a mild tufa, which generates the same feeling.