page_title: Gupta art
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Gupta art / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: The 6th century late Gupta period Dashavatara temple Deogarh, Uttar Pradesh at sunsetFrançais&#160;: Temple de Dashavatara dédié à Vishnou, bâti en pierres, v. 550. Fin de la dynastie Gupta. Deogarh, Uttar Pradesh
context_page_description: Gupta art is the art of the Gupta Empire, which ruled most of northern India, with its peak between about 300 and 480 CE, surviving in much reduced form until c. 550. The Gupta period is generally regarded as a classic peak and golden age of North Indian art for all the major religious groups. Although painting was evidently widespread, the surviving works are almost all religious sculpture. The period saw the emergence of the iconic carved stone deity in Hindu art, while the production of the Buddha-figure and Jain tirthankara figures continued to expand, the latter often on a very large scale. The traditional main centre of sculpture was Mathura, which continued to flourish, with the art of Gandhara, the centre of Greco-Buddhist art just beyond the northern border of Gupta territory, continuing to exert influence. Other centres emerged during the period, especially at Sarnath. Both Mathura and Sarnath exported sculpture to other parts of northern India.
  It is customary to include under "Gupta art" works from areas in north and central India that were not actually under Gupta control, in particular art produced under the Vakataka dynasty who ruled the Deccan c. 250–500.
context_section_description: For reasons that are not entirely clear, for the most part the Gupta period represented a hiatus in Indian rock-cut architecture, with the first wave of construction finishing before the empire was assembled, and the second wave beginning in the late 5th century, just as it was ending.  This is the case, for example, at the Ajanta Caves, with an early group made by 220 CE at the latest, and a later one probably all after about 460.  Instead, the period has left almost the first surviving free-standing structures in India, in particular the beginnings of Hindu temple architecture.  As Milo Beach puts it: "Under the Guptas, India was quick to join the rest of the medieval world in a passion for housing precious objects in stylized architectural frameworks", the "precious objects" being primarily the icons of gods.
  The most famous remaining monuments in a broadly Gupta style, the caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora (respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain) were in fact produced under other dynasties in Central India, and in the case of Ellora after the Gupta period, but primarily reflect the monumentality and balance of Guptan style. Ajanta contains by far the most significant survivals of painting from this and the surrounding periods, showing a mature form which had probably had a long development, mainly in painting palaces. The Hindu Udayagiri Caves actually record connections with the dynasty and its ministers, and the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh is a major temple, one of the earliest to survive, with important sculpture, although it has lost its mandapa and covered ambulatory for parikrama.
  Examples of early North Indian Hindu temples that have survived after the Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh include those at Tigawa (early 5th century), Sanchi Temple 17 (similar, but respectively Hindu and Buddhist), Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465), Bhitargaon, the largest Gupta brick temple to survive,  and Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600–625 CE).  Gop Temple in Gujarat (c. 550 or later) is an oddity, with no surviving close comparator.
  There are a number of different broad models, which would continue to be the case for more than a century after the Gupta period, but temples such as Tigawa and Sanchi Temple 17, which are small but massively built stone prostyle buildings with a sanctuary and a columned porch, show the most common basic plan that is elaborated in later temples to the present day.  Both of these have flat roofs over the sanctuary, which would become uncommon by about the 8th century.  The Mahabodhi Temple, Bhitargaon, Deogarh and Gop already all show high superstructures of different shapes.  The Chejarla Kapoteswara temple demonstrates that free-standing chaitya-hall temples with barrel roofs continued to be built, probably with many smaller examples in wood.
caption: Dashavatara Temple, Deogarh, a 6th-century Vishnu temple, originally with a mandapa and covered ambulatory.
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