Indian Art History: Major Periods, Styles and Movements
Chronology you must hold
Prehistoric: Bhimbetka rock shelters - haematite and charcoal, hunting and dance scenes. Harappan: steatite seals, the bronze Dancing Girl, the Priest-King. Mauryan: massively polished sandstone - Sarnath Lion Capital (Ashokan, now the national emblem) and the Didarganj Yakshi. Sunga–Satavahana: Bharhut and Sanchi railings, Amaravati marble. Kushana: two schools - Mathura, red mottled sandstone, indigenous, shaven head and strong musculature; Gandhara, grey schist, Hellenistic drapery, halo, wavy hair. Gupta: classical poise - Sarnath Buddha, Deogarh Dashavatara temple. Wall painting: Ajanta (Buddhist, roughly 2nd century BCE to 6th century CE) and Ellora (34 caves, 6th–10th century, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain together). South: Pallava Mahabalipuram, Chola lost-wax bronzes (Nataraja), Hoysala and Nayaka temples.
Manuscript and miniature painting
Mughal painting grew from Safavid Persian models: the Hamzanama under Akbar, the Akbarnama with work by Basawan and Daswanth, and Jahangir's natural-history painter Ustad Mansur. Rajasthani schools include Mewar, Bundi, Marwar and Kishangarh (Bani Thani, Nihal Chand). Pahari schools run from Basohli to Guler and Kangra. Company painting served British patrons; the Bengal School (Abanindranath Tagore, wash technique, Bharat Mata) reacted against it; the Progressives formed in 1947.
Worked example
Two Buddha heads: one in grey schist with wavy hair, a halo and heavy toga-like folds; the other in red sandstone with a shaven head and a thin transparent robe. Reasoning: material plus drapery plus hair type fixes the first as Gandhara (Greco-Roman contact) and the second as Mathura (indigenous idiom).
Traps
Calling Ajanta Hindu; forgetting Ellora is multi-faith; dating Gandhara after Gupta; treating the Bengal School as a revival of Mughal miniature rather than a wash-based nationalist idiom.