Between North India and the Far South, which had evolved two independent styles of architecture, lay the Deccan plateau where both the styles in pure or slightly modified form, known as Chalukya style, were in use. The Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas who ruled in this region were great builders. Near the Chalukya capital, Badami, we find a number of cave-temples which are dedicated to Brahmanical gods, and contain a number of fine images and good sculptures. There are also many stone temples at Badami and various other places constructed in the ordinary way. Most of these show the Pallava or Dravidian style. The same style was also largely adopted by the Rashtrakutas, and the world-famous Kailasa Temple at Ellora, is a marvellous specimen of the Dravidian style. It was constructed during the reign of Krishna I, in the latter half of the eighth century AD. The process of construction employed in the case of the Mamallapuram Rathas was repeated here on a much bigger scale. An entire hillside was first demarcated and separated from a long range of mountains; and then a huge temple was cut out of it in the same way as each Ratha at Mamallapuram was cut out of a rock-boulder. The big temple, standing in an open court, now appears like an ordinary one, but it is merely the remnant of a solid mass of stone that once formed a part of the hill which now surrounds the temple on three sides.
The temple has a Dravidian sikhara and is elaborately carved with fine sculptures. Caves, excavated in the sides of the hills round it, contain big halls decorated with finely wrought pillars and images of various Brahmanical divinities. The Kailasa temple at Ellora is a splendid achievement of art, and considering the technical skill and labour involved, is unequalled in the history of the world.
The hill at Ellora contains a number of rock-cut caves within a short distance of the famous temple. The caves generally resemble those of the earlier period at Nasik and Karle, but the facade of the Visvakarma cave shows a pleasing modification.
The caves on the island of Elephanta, near Bombay, are also renowned and contain a number of large and remarkable images of Brahmanical gods.
The Mysore Plateau
The Hoysalas who succeeded the later Chalukyas and ruled over the Mysore plateau in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD evolved a new style of architecture. They perhaps inherited the art-traditions of their predecessors, the Gangas, during whose rule the famous colossal Jaina image of Gomata was constructed by Chamunda Ray, a minister, in about AD 983. The statue, placed on the top of a hillock at Sravana Belgola, is more than 56 feet high, i.e. about ten times the size of a human being. It is wrought out of a single block of stone of the hardest species. In boldness of conception and difficulty of execution, it has perhaps no rival among the sculptures of the world.
The Hoysalas displayed the same qualities, though in a different way, in the construction of their temples. These temples are not square but polygonal or star-shaped. The essential characteristics of these temples are the high bases or plinths which follow all the windings of the temple and thus offer a huge length of vacant space to be elaborately carved with sculptures. The sikhara is pyramidal but low, and may be regarded as a modified type of the Dravidian. The best-known example of the Hoysala style is the famous Hoysalesvara temple at Halebid or Dorasamudra. It stands on a terrace, about five or six feet high, paved with stone slabs. The entire height is covered with a succession of eleven running friezes of elephants, tigers, scrolls, horsemen, and celestial beasts and birds. Each frieze has a length of 700 feet or more, and the entire surface is covered with sculptures. The lowest frieze, for example, contains no less than two thousand elephants finely executed, and most of them with riders and trappings. Similar elaboration of decoration is found in the remaining ten friezes. The Hoysalesvara temple contains, as has been aptly remarked, “one of the most marvellous exhibitions of human labour to be found even in the patient East”.
Medieval Sculptures
The medieval sculptures may best be studied with reference to the temples which they adorn. 
Therenatraj image in CHOLAS dynasty) were, besides, isolated images of gods and goddesses, in considerable numbers. There were many local schools with distinctive characteristics, fostered by different ruling dynasties (e.g. Palas, Senas, Chandellas, Kalachuris). It is neither possible nor necessary to refer in detail to these numerous schools spread all over India. The medieval sculptures are gradually dominated more and more by religious influence and less by aesthetic ideas. Sometimes they seem ugly and even horrible to the modern eye, though they represent faithfully some religious concept. The conception of Nataraja Siva is one of the few valuable contributions of medieval art, especially in South India. In North India we come across both Buddhist and Brahmanical images of a fairly high standard, but there is hardly any original conception. In the later period they are influenced by Tantrik ideas which are not always very pleasing to the modern taste.
Art in ancient India has in the main been a handmaid of religion. It has ordinarily expressed the prevailing religious faiths and beliefs, and spiritual conceptions and emotions. To understand and appreciate it properly one must have a thorough understanding of the different phases of religious evolution. In earlier periods, however, there was more of really artistic spirit, and the religious ideas were also more compatible with modern aesthetic taste. Gradually there was a decline in artistic feeling and the artists were mere mechanical instruments in rendering, to order, the later concepts of religion.
Medieval Painting
The ceilings of the rock-cut temple at Kailasa and the adjoining caves contain pictures of a type and style different from those of Ajanta and Bagh. The cave temple at Sittannavasal in Pudukottai (Madras) contains some fine paintings of the time of the Pallava king Mahendravarman. Chola paintings of the eleventh century AD have been discovered in the great temple at Tanjore. The art of painting in later periods is mostly known from illuminations on palm -leaves of manuscripts found in Eastern India and Gujarat, but they are of much inferior quality.
Conclusion
A review of the progress and development of Indian art, such as we have attempted above, is necessary for the proper understanding of the high culture and refinement of the ancient Indians. For true art is an unerring expression of mind, and a national art is a true reflex of national character. Great nations of the world have left behind them unmistakable evidence of their greatness in their works of art. The nature and excellence of art constitute a sure means by which we can understand the essential characteristics of a nation and make a fair estimate of its greatness. Judged by the standard of art, Indian civilisation must be regarded as occupying a very high place indeed among those of antiquity. It exhibits not only grace and refinement but technical skill and patient industry of a very high order. Taken in a mass, Indian art offers the most vivid testimony to the wonderful resources in men and money by the rulers, and the religious spirit, occasionally reaching to a sublime height, that dominated the entire population. It shows, as the national ideal, the subordination of ideas of physical beauty and material comfort to ethical conceptions and spiritual bliss. Amid the luxuries and comforts of worldly life, the thought of the world beyond never ceased to exercise a dominant influence. The changes in spiritual ideas and ideals, from the sublime purity of early Buddhism to the less pleasing forms of the Tantrik cult, are also reflected in art. A more detailed study of the subject is beyond the scope of the present work, but its meaning and significance for the correct interpretation of ancient Indian life must be clearly grasped by every student of History.
