Sondani, also Sondhni, is a small village at a distance of about 4 km from
Mandsaur situated on Mahu-Nimach Highway towards Mahu in
Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh (; ; ) is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and the largest city is Indore, Indore. Other major cities includes Gwalior, Jabalpur, and Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar. Madhya Pradesh is the List of states and union te ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
.
Victory monuments (525 CE)
The spot is famous for a series of monuments with inscriptions, established by
Yasodharman (ruled 515 – 545 CE), who praised himself for having defeated the
Alchon Hun king
Mihirakula.
The victory monuments consist in two pillars, with various other sculptural elements pointing to the existence of a former temple at this spot.
Style
The art and style of the sculptural remains at Sodani are considered as a good marker of the final period of
Gupta art, being dated to the reign of
Yasodharman (ruled 515 – 545 CE), and more precisely to about 525 CE. After that point and for the next centuries, Indian politics became extremely fragmented, with the territory being divided between smaller dynasties. The art of Sondani is considered as transitional between Gupta art and the art of
Medieval India
Medieval India was a long period of post-classical history in the Indian subcontinent between the ancient and modern periods. It is usually regarded as running approximately from the break-up of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century to the star ...
: it represents "an aesthetic which hovered between the classical decorum of Gupta art on the one hand and on the other the medieval canons which subordinated the figure to the larger religious purpose".
References
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Villages in Mandsaur district