The best examples of decorative sculptures are : —
1. The Buddhist, of the Sarnath, San chi, and Amravati topes, and the caves of Ellora, Kanheri, and Ajanta.
2. The Jaina, of the temples of Mount Abu, at Khajuraho, the ancient capital of Bandelkhand, at Sonari, and in the fort at Gwalior.
3. The Brahmanical at Avantipur in Cashmere, of the temples at Benares, and at Bindraband, at the Kutub at Delhi, of Tirumulla Nayak’s [Trimul Naik’s] Choultri at Madura, and the Kyi as at Ellora.
4. The Mahommedan, namely : —
(a) The Pathan, decorative carving of Kutub-ud-din’s gate- way at Delhi, a.d. 1193 ; the Kutub Minar, at Delhi, a.d. 1200 ; and the palace at Ahmedabad.
(b) The Mogol, of the palaces at Fattehpur Sikri, and the Taj Mahal at Agra.
According to Captain Cole, the elaborate Hindu carvings which covered the massive stone masonry of the temple of Avantipur in Cashmere, and which were of the ninth century of our era, supply the examples to which northern Hindu sculp- ture of the present day owes much of its origin. The quaint horizontal decorative treatment of Hindu sculpture in the tenth century pillars of ancient Delhi enters into the modern designs of that city ; and the twelfth century surface ornamented bas- reliefs of the Pathans at the Kutub are still commonly the types of Delhi art. In the Bombay Presidency the Jaina carvings of Vimala Sah’s temple at Mount Abu, erected circa a.d. 1032, indicates the origin of much that characterises modern Bombay carvings ; while the Mahommedan Ahmedabad buildings of the fifteenth century point clearly to the art which gave birth to the ornament which is so prolific at that place. At Madras the carvings on the pillars of Trimul Naik’s Choultri, executed in the early part of the seventeenth century, are good illustrations of the source of the modern art of Madras. v
