Sculpture in India

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The first known sculpture in the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley civilization (3300–1700 BC). These include the famous small bronze dancing girl. However such figures in bronze and stone are rare and greatly outnumbered by pottery figurines and stone seals, often of animals or deities very finely depicted.

Sculpture was the favoured medium of artistic expression on the Indian subcontinent. Indian buildings were profusely adorned with it and indeed are often inseparable from it. The subject matter of Indian sculpture was almost invariably abstracted human forms that were used to instruct people in the truths of the Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain religions. The nude was used both to represent the body as a symbol of spirit and to reveal the imagined shapes of the gods. There is an almost complete suppression of individuality in Indian sculpture; this is because the figures are conceived of as shapes that are more perfect and final than anything to be found in the merely transitory appearance of human models. The multiple heads and arms of sculptured Hindu divinities were thought necessary to display the manifold attributes of these gods’ power.