In about A.D. 1200, northern India was conquered by people whose religion was Islam.  When they wanted to build beautiful mosques, palaces, and tombs, they hired artists and workmen who had previously worked for Hindu rulers and who had built Hindu and Jain temples.  Other artists made books with wonderful paintings for a variety of people, including Hindu and Muslim rulers and Jain merchants.  From their names we can tell whether the painters were Hindu or Muslim. 

European traders and travellers brought Western paintings and illustrated books to India from the late 1500's onward.  Indian artists began to experiment with some imported ideas such as the use of shadows and European-style perspective to give a sense of distance.  The Europeans wanted to take home pictures of Indian plants, animals, and everyday life. 

The Stupas of Sanchi. Some of the best preserved early stupas stand at Sanchi in central India.  The largest, known as the Great Stupa, is surrounded by a railing with four carved gateways facing the four directions of the compass.  The gateways were probably carved in the A.D. 100's.  The carvings have a wonderful vitality and show a world where people and animals live together in happiness and plenty.  Crowds of people wait to see the Buddha or watch his miracles.  However, as at all early Buddhist monuments, the Buddha himself is not shown in human form.  Instead, he is depicted by symbols, such as thewheel, which represents his teaching.  Sometimes his presence is indicated by footprints or an empty throne.  Probably, the Buddha is not shown because he asked his followers not to make images of him. 

Sanchi and other early monuments appeal to people's love of nature.  The most frequently shown flower is the lotus, which has a special meaning.  The lotus grows from the mud at the bottom of a pond or river but produces a beautiful white blossom.  Buddhists believe that, like the lotus, people can rise from the mud of materialism into the sunlight.  Lotus flowers were both a beautiful decoration and a religious symbol.  

The Buddha image.  The Buddha never appears on early monuments, but images of him began to be made in two areas of India from about A.D. 100.  One area was Gandhara in the northwest, now part of Pakistan.  The other was Mathura, in the heart of northern India, not far from the modern city of New Delhi.  The Gandhara and Mathura images are quite different in style.  The Gandhara style shows influences from Greece and Rome that came to India through Bactria in Central Asia (see AFGHANISTAN [Early invasions]).  The Mathura images were more Indian in style.  For example, like other Indian images, the Mathura Buddha has broad shoulders and a narrow waist, suggesting the power of a lion. 

At both Gandhara and Mathura, the Buddha image has certain symbolic elements.  For example, an urna (a dot in the centre of the forehead) and an ushnisha (a bump on the head) symbolize the Buddha's insight and wisdom.  The Buddha's hand gestures are also symbolic.  The raised right hand means that followers should have no fear.  The open right hand extended downward means the Buddha is offering a gift or granting a favour.  Hands folded in the lap represent meditation.  Hands held together in front of the chest symbolize teaching.  

In early images, the Buddha is often depicted like an ordinary man who, through his efforts and stern discipline, has triumphed over the weaknesses of the flesh.  Later images have softer contours and large haloes decorated with bands of flowers, perhaps indicating that people's idea of the Buddha had changed.  In these later images, he is seen as superhuman and transcendent (above or beyond the real world of men and women).  Therefore his image is wholly gentle with no sense of a struggle to conquer human frailties.

Ajanta.  Some of the finest sculptures and paintings are in the 28 caves at Ajanta, in western India.  Paintings are found in only a few of these caves, which were created between 100 B.C. and the A.D. 400's.  

Craft workers who were organized in groups similar to guilds carried out the work at the caves.  Some cut out the rock and sculpted it.  Others applied a layer of plaster over the rock surface, made drawings, and then painted the murals using natural pigments such as ochre.  The Ajanta paintings have rich and varied shades of yellows, browns, reds, and greens.  Blue was used, more sparingly, in later works.  The blue pigment was made from a costly imported mineral, lapis lazuli

 Ellora. Artists worked at the cave site of Ellora, near Ajanta, until about 1000 A.D. They created Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves next to each other.  The greatest monument at Ellora, dating from the mid-800's, is a temple to the Hindu god Shiva.  It was carved out of the cliff like a great piece of sculpture.  The workers started at the top and gradually cut downward.  The temple is called the Kailashanatha temple, taking its name from Mount Kailasha, in the Himalaya, where the Hindus believe Shiva lives.  The temple is rich in symbolism.  Cut from the cliff, it is literally a carved mountain.  Its sculpture includes scenes illustrating Shiva's power.  For example, near the base of the temple the many-armed demon Ravana is shown shaking the mountain peak where Shiva and his wife, the goddess Parvati, sit.  The artist has captured a look of alarm on Parvati's face, but Shiva shows no fear.  He merely stretches out his foot, pressing down the mountain and imprisoning Ravana beneath it.  The scene is deeply cut into the rock, the contrasts of light and shade increasing its impact. 

Elephanta. Magnificent sculptures were also carved at a cave temple on the island of Elephanta, off the coast of Bombay.  The temple was built in the A.D. 500's.  Various legends concerning the god Shiva are portrayed in large panels cut into the rock and surrounding an enormous three-headed torso of Shiva.  Here, the sculpture's powerful elegance, its size, and its arrangement convey the majesty of the Hindu religious vision.

Most surviving Hindu temples from this period are of stone, though a few are of brick.  Artists carved the exterior and sometimes the interior with hundreds of figures of gods, people, animals, and plants.  Most temples have one or several pillared halls called mandapa.  Worshippers pass through the halls to a garbhagrha (small chamber) where the image of the temple's main deity (god or goddess) is housed.  A shikhara (tall tower) rises above the most sacred part of the temple. 

The temple conveys many symbolic meanings.  The floor plan of early temples may have been like the Aryan fire altar, an altar used to sacrifice food to the gods by burning it in a special fire.  In later times a mandala (sacred diagram symbolizing the universe, usually circular) was drawn on the ground by priests and the temple was built upon it.  The temple exterior is often compared to a mountain, which symbolizes the whole universe. 

Khajuraho.  The mountain symbolism is very obvious in temples at Khajuraho in central India.  Khajuraho was the capital of the Chandella kings, who built temples there from the mid-900's and through the 1000's.  The largest temples rise from high bases into a series of peaks culminating in a single, immensely high tower.  From far away, they look like mountain ranges.  Both Hindu and Jain temples were built in the same style at Khajuraho.  The walls and towers are decorated with hundreds of figures, including gods and goddesses, beautiful women, lovers, and mythical beasts. 

In southern India, the temple complex was rather different from that of the north.  The temple was surrounded by one or more walls.  It was entered through gopura (high gateways) covered with sculpted figures.  Often, there was a number of gateways leading from outer courtyards to inner courtyards.  The total area covered by the temple complex might be vast.  Such temples were great religious centres where Brahmin priests conducted worship, organized sacred readings, studied, taught, and debated.  Many are still in use today.  

Mahabalipuram.  At Mahabalipuram, in southern India, sculptors carved a group of temples from huge boulders.  Here, on a huge rock face, sculptors working in the 600's produced a spectacular work of art based on a famous legend.  In the sculpture, as in the story, thirsty animals of all kinds gather to watch the descent of the Ganges River.  Elephants, deer, a cat, and other beasts have come to drink; at one time water flowed from a tank at the top of the rock to suggest the river itself.  The elephants, including a baby, are very realistically carved, and are almost life-size.  At the side of this relief, a family of monkeys is carved in the round from a boulder.  The whole conveys the Indian empathy with nature.  

Orissa.  Some of the most spectacular early Hindu temples are in the state of Orissa, on India's northeastern coast.  They include the Mukteswar temple at Bhubaneswar and the Surya Deula (Sun Temple) at Konarak.  

The Qutb Minar symbolized Islamic victory rather than religious piety and marked a new era of sophistication in Indian art.  Hindu buildings reflected nature in both their shapes and decorations, but Islamic artists and architects were prohibited from using images, even though floral decoration was sometimes allowed.  Instead they worked in pure geometric designs, reflecting the abstract definition of Allah.  The purity of the decoration on the Qutb Minar is a fine example of this art. 

Unlike the Hindus, the Muslims were city-dwellers and city-builders.  Most Islamic rulers in Delhi constructed urban areas in their favourite style, but these styles did not always please their successors.  For example, the walled town of Tughluqabad was occupied byone dynasty, but then deserted by later Delhi rulers.  Ruins of tombs, city walls, colleges, and mosques bear witness to more than 300 years of Muslim rule in Delhi.  Islamic rulers in Gujarat, Bengal, and the southern Deccan constructed buildings and cities in local styles. 

 Garden design also owed much to the Indian climate.  The emperor and his court spent much of the year in Kashmir, where people lived outdoors.  The gardens of the emperor and his nobles had terraces and stairways with streams running alongside them carrying cool water down from the mountains to nearby lakes.  There was also a complex system of fountains and cascades.  At Delhi and Agra, special channels carried cooling water through the interiors of buildings.

In the 1600's, Akbar's grandson, the emperor Shah Jahan, built mosques and other buildings within the Red Forts of Delhi and Agra.  These buildings were made of glistening white marble.  So too was the magnificent Taj Mahal, the tomb that Shah Jahan ordered for his wife beside the Jumna River, at Agra (see TAJ MAHAL). 

Mughal painting.  Almost all the Mughal emperors of India between about 1570 and 1750 employed large numbers of Hindu and Muslim painters.  These artists at first produced miniatures that were illustrations for the emperor's books.  More than 100 painters worked in the palace studio at any given time on scenes for histories, poetry books, books of fables, or biographies of the emperor.  The most experienced artists did the line drawings for the illustrations, while the less experienced or less talented artists ground the colours and painted in the scenes.  The Muslim artists used bright coloursmade from powdered minerals.  Hindu painters used colours derived from vegetable or animal products.  Mughal artists loved naturalism in these miniatures and tried to make their pictures as realistic as possible.  Human and animal portraits became a speciality.  But the artists also loved depicting scenes from daily life.  After European prints began to arrive in India by ship from the West, Indian painters learned about perspective and three-dimensional effects. 

The Tagore family of Bengal were important in shaping India's modern art.  The Tagores stressed India's spiritual heritage.  They felt it was important for an artist to use his or her "inner eye" rather than to follow the academic teachings of the British art schools.  Abanindranath Tagore taught at the Government Art School in Calcutta only after he obtained the freedom to teach his students in his own way. Rabindranath Tagore, who won a Nobel Prize for literature, founded a new educational centre, Santiniketan, where art was an important concern.  Rabindranath Tagore brought together many different artists--from cities and villages, from Europe, and from other parts of Asia.  He felt that students should see art in as many styles and media as possible and should have complete freedom in their form of expression.  One of the most important contributions of the Tagores was bringing Indian artists in touch with their own heritage--ranging from the skilful paintings of Ajanta to the bold and beautiful art of village India.  Rabindranath Tagore, interested mainly in literature, did not begin to draw or paint seriously until he was 67 years old.  By the time of his death at the age of 81, he had produced nearly 2,000 works in ink and watercolour. 

Indian craftworkers have traditionally combined art with producing useful objects.  Craftworkers of the Harappan civilization nearly 4,000 years ago produced jewellery, gold ornaments, seals, and toys.  

Indian craftworkers have made religious images of bronze or clay from these early times.  Jewellery has always been highly prized in India, and craftworkers have excelled in making ornaments from jewellery worn by village women to the crowns of princes.  The Mughal emperors loved jade and precious stones.  Highly skilled craftworkers made Shah Jahan a magnificent throne, called the Peacock Throne, mostly of precious stones and metal.