Prcs0uteb to of the
Pn&crstlg of ®0rottto
The Secretary of State for India— -through the Cttee, formed in The Old Country to aid in re- placing the loss caused by the Disastrous j?ire of n-ebruarv the 14th, 1890.
i
FRONTISPIECE.
Manmodi Chaitva Cave, Junnai;.
From a photon^niph.
/V-^C
THE CAVE TEMPLES OF INDIA.
By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., V.P.R.A.S.,
AND
JAMES BURGESS, F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S.,
MEMBRE DE LA SOCIKTE ASFATTQUE, ETC.; ARCH^OLOGICAI. SURVEYOR AND REPORTER TO GOVERNMENT, AVRSTERN INDIA.
Capital or Tee from a Rock-cut Dagoba at fehaja.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF HER MAJESTY's SECRETARY OF STATE, &C.
LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & Co., Waterloo Place ; TRUBNER & Co., Ludgate Hill ; E. STANFORD, Charing Cross; and W. GRIGGS, Hanover Street, Peckham.
1880.
PRINCIPAL WORKS ON THE SAME SUBJECT, BY JAMES FERGUSSON.
ILLUSTBA.T10NS OF THK RocK-cuT Temples OF India. 18 Plates on tinted litho- gi-aphy. Folio. With an 8vo volume of Text, Plans, «S:c. 21. 7s. 6d. John Weale, 1845.
PiCTUKESQUE ILLUSTRATIONS OF AnCIEUT AbCHITECTURE IN HiNDOSTAN. 24 PlatCS
in coloured lithography, with Plans, Woodcuts, Explanatory Text, &c. 41. 4s. London : Hogarth, 1847.
Tree and Serpent Worship ; or. Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India, in the l&t and 4th centuries after Christ. 100 Plates and 21 Woodcuts. 4to. 5/. OS. India Oifice. 2nd edit., 1873.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. 8vo. 756 pages and 394 Wood- cuts. 21. 2s. London : Mui-ray, 1876.
PRINCIPAL WORKS ON THE SAME SUBJECT, BY JAMES BURGESS.
Elephanta or Gharapuri. The Rock-Temples of Elephanta described and illus- trated with Plans and Drawings. In large 8vo., 80 pages, with Drawings and 18 Photographs. Rs, 10-8. 1871.
The same, in large 8vo, 80 pages, and Drawings without the Photographs. Stitched. Rs. 3.
Bombay : Thacker & Co. ; London : Triibner & Co.
The Temples of Satrunjaya. The celebrated Jaina plaee of pilgrimage near Palitana in Kathiawad. 45 Photographs and Explanatory Text. Folio. Bombay : Sykes & Dwyer, 1869.
Aech^ological Survey of Western India. Vol. I. Belgam and Kaladji Districts. 20 Photographs and 36 Lithographic Plates, with Explanatory Text, &c. 4to. India Office, 1874. 21. 2s.
Arciiji:ological Survey op Western India. Vol. 11. Kathiawad and Kachh. 32 Photographs and 42 Lithographic Plates. 1876. 3/. 3s.
Arch.-eological Survey of Western India. Vol. III. Report on the Antiquities in the Provinces of Bidar and Aurangabad. With 66 Photographic and Litho- graphed Plates and several Woodcuts. Published by order of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India in Council. 21. 2s. in half morocco, gilt top. London : W. H. Allen & Co., N. Triibner & Co., Stanford & Co. Orders received by Thacker & Co., Limited, Esplanade, Bombay.
CONTENTS.
PART I.— THE EASTERN CAVES.
By James P'ergusson.
Page Preface ......... xiii
Introduction -..-----.3
Ethnography -..--...5
History --.-..--.9 Religions - -- - - - - - -12
Chronology - - - - - - - -21
Architecture -- - - - - - -27
Chapter I — Barabar Group - - - - - - 37
Chapter II. — Rajgir - - - -- - - -44
Sita Marhi Cave ........ 52
Chapter IIa. — Katak Caves - - - - - - - 55
Introductory - - - - - - - -55
Chapter III. — Hathi Gumpha - - - - - - 66
Bagh nnd Sarpa, or Tiger and Serpent Caves and smaller Cells - - 68
Ananta Cave - - - - - - - -70
Vaikuntha Cave - - - - - - - -75
Jaya Vijaya and Swargapuri Caves - - - - - 76
Rani ka Nur .-.-._-. 77
Ganesa Gumpha - - - - - - - -86
Chapter IV. — Undavilli Caves on the Krishna River near Bejwara - 95
Chapter V. — Mahavallipur, or the seven Pagodas - - - 105
Introductory - - - - -- - - 105
Chapter VI. — Rathas, Mahavallipur - - - - - 113
Ganesa Ratha - - - - -- - -114
Draupadi's Ratha - - - - - - - -116
Bhima's Ratha - - - - - - - -117
Aquna and Dharmaraja Rathas ...... 122
Sahadeva's Ratha - - - - - - - -135
Chapter VII. — The Caves, Mahavallipur ----- 141
Saliwankuppam - - - - - - - -153
Great Bas-relief - - - - - - - -155
Kulumulu --------- 159
Conclusion - - - - - - - - -159
cy-
IV CONTENTS.
PART II.— CAVE TEMPLES OF WESTERN INDIA. By James Bukgess.
Page
Chapter I. — Introduction ------- 165
Classification of Buddhist Monuments - - - - -171
Chronology of Buddhist Caves ------ 181
Chapter II. — Cave Temples, &c., in Kathiawar - - - - 187
Introductory -------- 187
Kathiawar caves - - - - - - - -193
Two-storeyed Rock-cut Hall at Juuagadh - - - - - 197
Other Caves in Kathiawar ------- 200
Talaja - - - - 201
Sana - - - - 202
Chapter III. — The Buddhist Cave Temples in the South Kontjan - 204
Caves of Kuda - - 204
Mhar ..-.----- 209
K61, Sirwal, Wai, &c. - - - - - - - 211
Karadh - - - - - - - - - 213
Chapter IV. — The Caves in the vicinity of Kakle and the Bor Ghat 218
Kondane --------- 220
Bhaja - - - - - - - - - 223
Rock Temples of Bedsa - - - - - - - 228
Karle .---.--.- 232
Pitalkhora Rock Temples ------- 242
Sailarwadi Caves -------- 246
Chapter V.-VI. — The Junnar Caves . - - . . 248
Chapter VII. — Nasik Caves ------- 263
Chapter VIII. — The Ajanta Cave Temples - _ - - 280
Paintings --------- 284
Early Buddhist Caves ------- 289
BOOK U.
Chapter I. — Later or Mahayana Caves at Ajanta - - - 297
Chapter II. — Latest Caves at Ajanta . . . . - 320
Chaitya caves - - - - - - - -341
Caves of Ghatolkach ---.... 345
Chapter III. — Kanheri Caves ------ 343
Chaitya caves - - - - - ... - 350
Darbar cave ------.. 353
Kondiwte --------- 350
Chapter IV. — The Caves of Bagh .-.-.. 353
Chapter IVa, — The Buddhist Caves at Elura - . - - 357
Viswakarma cave -------- 377
The Do Thai - - - - . . - - 379
The Tin Thai - - - - . - - - 381
CONTENTS. V
Page Chapter IVb. — Aurangabad Cave Temples ----- 38.5
Dhamnar -..-----. 392
Kholvi caves .--.-.-. 395
BOOK III.— TPIE BRAHMANICAL CAVES.
Chapter I. — Introductory ------- 399
Chapter II. — Cave Temples at Aihole and Badami in the Dekhan - 404
Cave-temples at Badami ----..- 405
Chapter III. — Karusa Caves ...... 417
Mahadeva's cave -------- 419
Lakola's cave -- - - - - - - 422
Chapter IV. — Brahmanical Caves in the Dekhan, Momlvabad, Pooxa,
&c. - - - - - - - - - - 42.=;
Cave-temples of Bhamburde, Rajapuri, &c. ----- 426
Miilkeswara - - - -- . . . 427
Patur --------- 428
Iludreswar -.- - - - - -- - 428
Patna ---..-..- 428
Dhokeswara ----.__- 429
Chapter V. — Brahmanical Cave-Temples at Elura - - - 431
Ravana-ka Khai -------- 432
The Dasa Avatara cave ------- 43,5
Rameswara --------- 438
Caves north of Kailasa - - - - - - -441
Nilakantha --------- 443
Teli-ka-Gana - - - - - - - - 444
Kumbharvv^ada -------- 444
Janwasa --------- 444
The Milkmaid's cave - - - - - - - 445
Sita's Nani, or Dumar Lena - - - . . . . 446
Kailasa or the Ranga Mahal - - - - - - 448
Dhamnar Brahmanical Rock-cut temple ----- 463
Chapter VI. — Late Brahmanical Caves ----- 465
Elephanta - -- - - - - - - 465
Jogeswari or Amboli ------- 475
Harischandragad Brahmanical caves - - - - - 477
Ankai-Tankai Brahmanical caves ------ 480
Christian Cave Chui'ch at Mandapeswar - - - - - 481
Concluding remarks -..--.. 482
BOOK IV.— THE JAINA CAVE-TEMPLES.
Chapter I, — The Jains and Jinas ..--.. 485
Chapter II. — Jaina Cave Temples - - - - - - 490
Badami Jaina cave - - - - - - - - 491
Aiholft ---..-.-- 491
VI
CONTENTS.
Juinu caves at Patna
Chamar Lena > . .
Bhamer . - - .
Bamchandra . . .
Chaptek III. — Jaina Cavks at Elura
Chhota Kailasa . . -
The India Sabha -
The Jagannatha Sabha
Parswanatha . . _
Chapter IV.- Jaina Cave-Temples -
Dharasinva . . -
Ankai-Taukai Jaina Caves -
Gwalior . - - -
Concluding remarks
Appendix . . - -
age 492
493
494
494
495
495
496
500
502
503
503
505
509
510
513
LIST OF PLATES.
Map showing the Localities of the Caves. Plate
I. Sculptures from the Katak Caves.
II. Junagarh, plan of caves at Bawa Pyaras Math.
III. „ 1, two doors in cell K. ; 3, column in Uparkot Hall; 4, Wall
ornament in ditto.
IV. „ Rock-cut haU in the Uparkot, plans and section.
V. Kuda plan of Cave VI. ; Karadh Cave V. ; Sailarwadi, three caves. VI. Karadh Cave XL VIII., plan and section ; front of Cave V. VII. Rail at Kuda ; Buddhist symbols at Kondane, Bhaja, and Bedsi. VIII. Kondane, plan and section of Vihara ; plan of Chaitya. IX. Bhaja, plan of several caves and dagobas ; section of Chaitya. X. Bedsa Vihara, plan and section. XI. K&rle Chaitya, plan and section. XII. „ pillar and three capitals.
XIII. „ umbrella.
XIV. „ part of front screen and two capitals.
XV. Pitalkhora, plan and section of Chaitya ; ditto of Vihara. XVI. „ capitals in Vihara.
XVII. „ cell, plan and sections ; Junnar fa9ades at Tulja Lena and
Manmodi. XVIII. Junnar, plans and sections of several caves. XIX. Nasik, plans of Caves III. and VIH. XX. „ door of Caves III.
XXI. „ 1, pilaster in Cave III. ; 2, dagoba in ditto ; pillar in Cave XV. XXII. „ frieze in Cave III.
XXIII. „ 1, pillar at Sailarwadi ; 2, do. at Bhamchandra ; 3 and 4, capitals
at Nasik, Cave VIII.
XXIV. Plan and section of Chaitya Cave XIII. XXV. „ door of Chaitya-
XXVI. „ plans of XIV. and XV., and section of part of XIV.
XXVII. Ajanta, plan and section of Cave XII.
XXVIII. „ plans and sections of Caves X. and IX.
XXIX. „ old painting from Cave X.
XXX. „ pillar in Cave XL ; shrine door in Cave VI.
XXXI. „ Cave VII. sculptured side of antechamber.
XXXIL „ plans of Cave VI. (2 storeys).
XXXIIL „ plans of Caves XVI. and XVII.
XXXIV. „ pillar and pilaster in Cave XVI.
XXXV. „ image and pillar in Cave XVIL
XXXVI. „ section of Cave XIX.
Vlll LIST OF PLATES.
Plate XXXVII. Ajanta, plan of Cave XIX. (Chaitya) and of Cave XXA^. (Chaitya).
XXXYIII. „ dagoba in XXVI. ; and pillar in Cave XIX. and in Cave I.
XXXIX. Naga Raja.
XL. Ajanta, plans of Cave I.
XLI. „ frieze in Cave I.
XLII. „ shrine door and pillar in Cave I.
XLIII. „ painting in Cave I.
XLIV. „ ceiling panel in Cave I. and plan of Cave II.
XLV. „ 1, shrine door in Cave II. ; 2, pillar of antechamber ; and 3,
bracket in Cave XVI.
XL VI. „ Cave IV., plan.
XLVIL „ „ hall door.
XLVIII. „ „ piUar.
XLIX. „ Cave XXI. front of a chapel ; pilaster in XXI. ; do. in VI.
L. „ Nu'vana from Cave XXVI. •
LI. „ Buddha and Mara in Cave XXVI.
LII. Ghatotkachh, plan of vihara.
LIII. Kanheri, plan of Chaitya, &c.
LIV. „ Darbar or Maharaja's cave, &c.
LV. „ 1 , Buddhist Litany, and 2, Padmapani.
LVI. „ Buddha on Padraasana, with attendants.
LVII. Elura (2nd, 3rd, and 4th), Buddhist Caves, (Dhenvara, &c.).
LVIII. „ pillars in Dherwara and Tin Thai.
LIX. „ plan of Maharwara.
LX. „ adjoining Bauddha Caves.
LXI. „ front of shrine in the 6th Cave.
LXII. J, plan of Viswakarma.
LXIII. „ pillars in Viswakarma.
LXIV. „ Tin Thai, plan, ground floor.
LXV. „ Upper floor, Tin Thai and Aurangabad Cave VJI.
LX VI. Aurangabad Cave III. ; 1 , plan ; 2, pillar ; and 3, pilaster.
LXVII. Badami Caves I. and III. and Aihole Cave.
LXVni. Amba Cave, plan.
LXIX. Bhamburde Cave, plan.
LXX. l,Dhokeswara; 2, Ravana-ka-Khai, plan.
LXXI. Elura, pillar and pilaster in Ravana-ka-Khai.
LXXII. „ Saptamatras in Ravana-ka-Khai.
LXXIIL „ Das Avatara, plan, ground floor.
LXXIV. „ „ upper floor.
LXXV. „ 1, Narasinha from Das Avatara; 2, Triraurti.
LXX VI. „ 1. plan in Rameswara; 2, plan of small caves.
LXXVII. „ door of Rameswara.
LXXVIII. „ door of Cave XX.
LXXIX. „ Dumar Lena, plan.
LXXX. Kailasa, Dwajastambhas in Indra Sabha and Kailasa.
LXXXI. „ plan of lower floor, Kailasa.
LXXXI A. „ plan of upper floor, Kailasa.
LIST OF PLATES. IX
Plate LXXXII. Kailasa, elevation.
LXXXIII. „ 1, Gaja Laksbmi ; 2, Surya from Kumbarwara. LXXXIV. „ pillars and pilaster. LXXXV. Elephanta, plan. LXXXVI. Elura, Parswanatha image. LXXXVII, „ Indra Sabha, ground floor. LXXXVIII. „ „ upper floor.
LXXXIX. „ „ door of shrine.
XC. „ Jagannatha Sabha; 1, lower ; 2, upper floors* XCI. „ 1, Indra ; 2, Tirthankaras. XCir. „ pillars. XCIII. Dharasinha, Cave I., plan. XCIV. Ankai-Tankai Cave I., plans and sections. XCV. „ door of Cave I. ; 2, map of Tirthankara.
XCVI. Ancient Vihara at Bhaja. XCVII. „ elevation and sections.
XCVIII. „ sculptures.
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Late Mahayana representation of Buddha on his Lotus Throne, with Attendants, from Cave No. XXXV. at Kanheii.
p
LIST OP WOODCUTS.
Page
Frontispiece. — Manmodi Chaitya Cave, Junnar, from a Photograph.
Opposite page. — Buddha on the Lotus Throne, from Cave XXXV. at Kanheri.
No. 1. Front of the Chaitya Cave at Bhaja, from a Photograph - - 30
„ 2. View and Plan of Jarasandha-ka-Baithak, from Cunningham - - 33
„ 3. Facade of the Lomas Rishi Cave, from a Photograph - - - 39
„ 4. Lomas Rishi Cave - - - - - - -41
„ 5. Sudama Cave - - - - - - - -41
„ 6. Kondiwte Cave, Salsette - - - - - - 42
„ 7. Plan Son Bhandar Caves, from Cunningham's Report, vol. iii. - - 46
„ 8. Section Son Bhandar Caves, from Cunningham's Report, vol. iii. - 46
„ 9. Front of Son Bhandar Cave, from a Photograph - - - 46
„ 10. Representation of a Hall, from Cunningham's Stupa at Bharhut - 47
„ 11. Plan and Section Sita Marhi Cave - - - - - 52
„ 12. Tiger Cave, Udayagiri, from a drawing by Capt. Kittoe - - 69
„ 13. Plan of Ananta Cave - - - - - - -71
„ 14. Trisula from Arraravati - - - - - - 73
„ 1 5. Trisula and Shield from Sanchi - - - - - - 74
„ 16. Pilaster from Ananta Cave - - - - - .74
„ 17. Lower Storey, Rani ka Nur, from Plan by C. C. Locke - - 77
„ 18. Upper Storey, Rani ka Nur - - - - - - 77
„ 19. Diagram Section of the Rani k a Nur - - - - - 79
„ 20. Ganesa Gumpha - - - - - - -87
„ 21. Pillar in the Ganesa Gumpha, from a Sketch by the Author - - 87
„ 22. Yavana warrior, from the Rani k^ Nur - - - - - 94
„ 23. View of the Undavilli Cave, from a Photograph - - - 97
„ 24. Section of the Undavilli Cave, from a Drawing by Mr. Peters - - 100
„ 2B. General View of the Rathas Mahavallipur, fi"om a Sketch by the Author 112
„ 26. View of the Ganesa Ratha, from a Photograph - - - - 114
„ 27. Draupadi's Ratha, from a Photograph - - - - - 116
;, 28. Plan of Bhima's Ratha, from a plan by R. Chisholm - - - 118
„ 29. Pillar from Bhima's Ratha, from a Drawing by R. Chisholm - - 119
„ 30. Lycian Rock-cut Tomb, from a Drawing by Forbes and Spratts, Lycia - 120
„ 31. Plan of Dharmaraja's Ratha, from a Drawing by R. Chisholm - - 123
„ 32. View of Dharmaraja's Ratha, from a Photograph - - - 124
„ 33. Elevation of Dharmaraja's Ratha, Mahavallipur, from a Drawing by R.
Chisholm .----..- 125
„ 84. Section of Dharmaraja Ratha, with the suggested internal arrangements
dotted in - - - - - - , . - 127
„ 35. Burmese Tower at Buddha Gaya, from a Photograph - - - 134
Xll
LIST OF WOODCUTS.
No.
36.
37.
38. 39.
40. 41. 42. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73,
Sculpture .it
Plan of Sahadeva's Ratha, from a Drawing by R. Chisholm Plan of Temple at Aihole . . . .
View of Sahadeva's Ratha, from a Photograph - Conventional elevation of the front of a cell, from a
Jamalgiri -------
Front of Cave at Saliwankuppam, from a Photograph -
Head of Naga Raja, from Great Bas-relief at Mahavallipur
Capital from Cave XXIV. at Ajanta, from a Photograph
Rail from Sanchi, Tope No. 2 -
Capital or Tee of Rock-cut Dagoba at Bhaja, from a Photograph
Plan of the Bedsa Caves - . - . .
Capital of Pillar in front of Bedsa, from a Photograph -
View of the Interior of the Chaitya Cave at Karle, from a Photograph
Facade of Chaitya Cave at Karle, from a Sketch by J. F.
Lion Pillar at Karle, from a Drawing - - - -
Pillar in Nahapana Cave, Nasik, from a Photograph Pillar in Gautamiputra Cave, Nasik, No. III., from a Photograph View of exterior of the Chait^'a Cave at Nasik, from a Photograph Chhadanta Elephant, from Cave XVI. - - - -
Front aisle in Cave XVI. at Ajanta . - . .
King paying homage to Buddha . - . -
Buddha Teaching, from a wall painting in Cave XVI. - Asita and Buddha ------
The young Siddartha drawing the bow - - - -
Figures flying through the air -
Buddha and the Elephant - - . - .
Wall painting in Cave No. XVII., Ajanta . - -
Landing of Vijaya in Ceylon, and his Coronation, from Cave XVII. Capital of Pillar representing Tree Worship, from the Chaitya Cave
Kanheri -------
Screen in front of Chaitya Cave at Kanheri - . .
Padmapani, from a Nepalese Drawing - - - -
Great Vihara at Bagh, from a Plan by Dr. Impey
Fa9ade of the Viswakarma Cave at Elura - - -
Caves at Dhamnar, from a plan by General Cunningham
Bhamburde Cave, from a Drawing by T. Daniell
View of Kailasa from the West, from a Sketch by Jas. F.
Rock-cut Temple at Dhamnar, from a Plan by General Cunningham
Pillar in Cave at Elephanta, from a Photograph
Notre Dame de la Misericorde, Mandapeswar - - .
Sri, Consort of Vishnu ------
at
Page 136 136 137
138 154 157 157 173 227 228 229 233 236 239 269 269 273 287 304 307 308 308 308 310 311 312 314
350 251 357 365 378 394 426 449 463 467 481 524
PREFACE.
In the year 1843 I read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society on the Rock-Cut Temples of India,^ in which I embodied the results obtained during several journeys I had undertaken between the years 1836 and 1842 for the purpose of investigating their history and forms, together with those of the other architectural antiquities of India. It was the first attempt that had then been made to treat the subject as a whole. Many monographs of individual temples or of groups, had from time to time appeared, but no general descrip- tion, pointing out the characteristic features of cave architecture had then been attempted, nor was it indeed possible to do so, before the completion of the first seven volumes of " Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal " in 1838. The marvellous ingenuity which their editor James Prinsep displayed, in these volumes, in deciphering the inscriptions of Asoka and other hitherto unread documents, and the ability with which Turnour, Kittoe, and others who were inspired by his zeal, hastened to aid in his researches, revolutionised the whole character of Indian archaeology. The history of Buddha and of early Buddhism, which before had been mythical and hazy in the extreme, now became clear and intelligible and based on recognized facts. The relation, too, of Brahmanism and the other Hindu religions to Buddhism and to each other were now for the first time settled, on a basis that was easily understood and admitted of a logical superstructure raised upon it.
When all this was done the remaining task was easy. It only required that some one should visit the various localities where the caves were situated, and apply, the knowledge so amassed, to their classification. For this purpose I visited the eastern caves at Katak and Mahavallipur, as well as those of Ajanta, Elura, Karle, Kanheri,
1 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. viiu, pp. 30 to 92, aud afterwards republished with a foiio volume of eighteen lithographic plates from my own sketches of the caves.
XIV PREFACE.
Elephanta, and others in the west, and found no difficulty in seeing at a glance, to what religion each was dedicated, and as little in ascertaining their relative ages among themselves. A great deal has been done since by new discoveries and further investigations to fill up the cartoon I then ventured to sketch in, but the correct- ness of its main outlines have never been challenged and remain undisturbed.
One of the first works to appear after mine was the " Historical Researches " of Dr. Bird, published in Bombay in 1847,"^ but which from various causes — more especially the imperfection of the illus- trations— was most disappointing. Though this has been almost the only other work going over the same ground, the interest excited on the subject, led to the formation of a Cave Commission in Bombay in 1848 ^ for the purpose of investigating the history of the caves and taking measures for their preservation. One of the first fruits of their labour was the production, in August 1850, of a Memoir on the subject by the late Dr. Wilson, in the introductory paragraph to which he made the following statement, which briefly summarises what was then proposed to be done : —
" The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland having, on the suggestion of James Fergusson, Esq., to whom we are so much indebted for the artistic and critical illustration of the architectural antiquities of India, represented to the Court of Directors of the East India Company the propriety of taking steps for the preservation, as far as possible, of the Cave Temples and other ancient religious memorials of this country, and for their full delineation and description, before the work of their decay and destruction
1 Dr. Bird, in the preface to his Historical Researches, says : —
" The Court of Directors have at length responded to the Royal Asiatic Society's representation of the duty imposed on ua, as a nation, to preserve the relics of ancient art, and have accordingly sent out orders to each presidency that measures be adopted to keep them from further decay. They are also about to institute an Archaeological Commission for investigating the architectural character and age of the several monu- ments; an inquiry which, though long neglected, and left to other nations, less interested than ourselves in India, is likely to aid in dispelling the mist which for centuries has enveloped the historical age of these excavations and the object of their structure."
2 The Bombay Cave-Temple Commsssion consisted of the R«v. Dr. J. Wilson, F.R.S., President; Rev. Dr. Stevenson, Vice President; C. J. Erskine, C.S. ; Capt. Lynch, I. N. ; Dr. J. Harkness ; Venayak Gangadhar Shastri ; and Dr. H. J. Carter, Secretary, and was appointed in terms of a resolution (No. 2805) of 31st July 1848 of the Grovemment of Bombay.
PREFACE. XV
has made further progress, that honourable body has promptly responded to the call which has been addressed to it, and already taken certain steps for the accomplishment of the objects which are so much to be desired.^ With reference to the latter of these objects, it has determined to appoint a general Commission of Orientalists to direct its accomplishment in the way which may best tend to the illustration of the history, literature, religion, and art of ancient India. Preparatory to the commencement of the labours of that Commission, and the issuing of instructions for its researches, another of a local character has, with the approbation of the Government of India, been formed by the Bombay Branch of the Koyal Asiatic Society to make such preliminary inquiries about the situation and extent and general character of the antiquities, which are to be the subject of investigation, as may facilitate its judicious commencement and prosecution."^
This first Memoi?' was prepared by Dr. Wilson for the Bombay Cave Commission just referred to, in order to sketch the extent of the information then available on the subject, and to call forth, additions from persons possessed of special local knowledge.
In September' 1852 he read to the same Society his Second Memoir, containing short notices of the Aurangabad Caves and of a few others that had been brought to light during the preceding two years.
Previous to this, about July 1851, Lieutenant Brett had been
employed to take facsimiles of the inscriptions from the caves a
work strongly commended in the Court's despatch JSTo. 13 of 4th May 1853. Reduced copies were made to accompany Dr. Steven- son's papers on the inscriptions,^ but Lieutenant Brett's engagement was closed about tlie end of 1853, and his original copies were sent to England. In April 1856, Vishnu Shastri Bapat was engaged to continue Lieutenant Brett's work, and having some knowledge of the ancient characters and of Sanskrit, it was expected he would be serviceable in preparing translations also. Results were promised from time to time, but delayed till September 1860, when it was reported that the Pandit had translated 88 inscriptions into Marathi • but he died next year, and no results of his work were ever pub-
1 Despatches No. 15 of 29th May 1844, No. 1 of 27th January 1847, and No. 24 of 29th September 1847 ; also despatch of Lord Hardinge, No. 4. of 19th April 1847.
2 Jour. Bom. B. R. As. Soc. vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 36.
3 Jour. Bom. B. R. As. Soc, vol. v.
Y 132. jL
XVI PREFACE.
lished ; while the Commission itself ceased to exist early in 1861. It had, however, stirred up officers in different parts of the country to send in accounts of the antiquities in their districts, and among these the contributions of Sir Bartle Frere, Captain Meadows Taylor, Dr. E. Impey, Dr. Bradley, Sir W. Elliot, Mr. West, and others were valuable additions to our knowledge. At its instigation, also, the caves at Ajanta, Aurangabad, and Elephanta were cleared of accumulations of earth and silt.
The fresco paintings in the Buddhist caves at Ajanta being of very special interest. Captain Robert Gill was appointed by the Madras Government to make copies of them in oils. The work was one of considerable labour, but in the course of eight or ten years he sent home full-size copies of about thirty fresco paintings, many of them of very large size. The greater number of these paintings were exhibited in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, where they were most unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1866. Five of them only escaped, having remained in the stores belonging to the India Office, and consequently were not exhibited.
From the time that Major Gill had been first appointed to copy them, till the destruction of his work, much of the fresco painting in the caves had fallen off or been destroyed. Still sufficient was left to make it desirable to secure fresh copies of what still remained, and in 1873 Mr. Griffiths, of the School of Art in Bombay, was engaged to make fresh copies. He has already spent three seasons at Ajanta with some of his students, and has copied, with great fidelity, a considerable number of the fragments that still remain in a sufficiently perfect state, to make it worth while to reproduce them.^
Meanwhile the Secretary of State for India in Council in a despatch, dated in November 1870, proposed a survey of the architectural antiquities of Western India, and especially of the Cave-temples ; but no progress was made till 1873, when the Hon. J. Gibbs, C.S., prepared a minute on the subject in which he sketched a scheme for the Archseological Survey, and to him chiefly belongs the credit of carrying into effect the objects of the despatch.
The drawings for this work have been collected during the
1 These <;opief5 are now in this countiy, principally in the British Museum, and a small portion in the India Museum, South Kensington.
PREFACE. XVll
six seasons since the Archaeological Survey of Western India was commenced, and some of them, with others not reproduced here, have appeared in the three volumes of reports already published. There is, however, a very large collection of careful drawings illustrative of many details of sculpture, especially at Ajanta and Elura, which could not be reproduced in this work ;^ and it is hoped a further selection from them may form a prominent feature in, if it does not constitute, the next volume of the Survey Reports.^ If presented on a sufficiently large scale, these drawings would be most interesting to all engaged in the practice of art, as well as to all amateurs. With the frescoes of Ajanta and Bagh, and perhaps a very few other additions, they would form a very complete illus- tration of Buddhist art in sculpture, architecture, and painting from the third before our era to the eighth century after it.
One of the objects proposed at the time this survey was sanctioned was, that I, conjointly with Mr. Burgess, should, when the proper time arrived, write a general history of Cave Architecture in India. A scheme for this work was submitted to the Duke of Argyll, then Secretary of State for India, and sanctioned by his Grace in 1871. In order to carry this into effect Mr. Burgess remained at home, in Edinburgh, during the season 1877-78 to write his part, which forms practically the second part of this book ; but, owing to various causes it is not necessary to enumerate here, the whole of his part was not set up in type till just before his return to India in October last. The whole of my share, which forms practically the first part, was ready at the same time, and we were thus able to exchange parts and go over the whole together before his departure, and I was left to " make up " the whole and pass it through the press, which I have done during the past winter.
1 After this work had been almost wholly written Dr. Ed. W. West and his brother Mr. Arthur A. West placed in my hands a very large collection of notes and drawings from the Rock-Temples of the Bombay Presidency, collected and prepared by them whilst in India, with full permission to make any use I chose of them. I have used one of these plans and part of another, but I still hope to examine them more carefully and perhaps to make further use of so valuable a collection. — J.B.
2 Three volumes of Reports of the Survey and a collection of 286 Pali Sanskrit and old Canarcse inscriptions have already been published. The Reports contain accounts of the Cave Temples at Badami, in Kathiawar, at Dharsinva, Karusa, Amba, and Aurangabi'id. Accounts of other groups had also appeared either separately or in the Indian Antiquary.
XVlll PREFACE.
This arrangement, though inevitable under the circumstances, has, I fear, been in some respects unfavourable to the uniformity of the work. There is little doubt that if Mr. Burgess had been at home and in daily communication with me during the time the work was passing through the press, many points of detail might have been discussed and elaborated with more completeness than has been possible at a distance. There is, however, really nothing of importance on which we were not agreed before his departure. Had this not been the case, a better plan would probably have been to postpone indefinitely the appearance of the book. Had I been a younger man, I might possibly have recommended this course, especially if I had felt confident that the Indian Government would at any future period have sanctioned the necessary outlay. The abolition, however, of the establishment at Peckham, the dis- persion of the India Museum, and other symptoms of economy in matters relating to literature and art, seem to render it ex- pedient to proceed while there is the opportunity.
Supposing these personal difficulties had not existed, the work might certainly have been made more perfect if its publication had been delayed till the survey was complete, or at least more nearly so than it now is. At present our knowledge of the subject is rapidly progressive, and anything like completeness is consequently impossible. Since, for instance, Mr. Burgess' return to India in October last, two facts have been brought to light which have revolutionised our chronology of the old pre-Christian caves in the west, and gives our knowledge of them a precision that was not before attainable. One of these is the discovery of inscriptions in the Mauryan character (they have not yet been deciphered) in the caves at Pitalkhora. The other the discovery of the very old Vihara at Bhaja, described in the Appendix. "With two such dis- coveries in one season there is every probability that others of great if not of equal importance may be made, and give the history of the western caves a precision it cannot now pretend to possess.
One of the weak points in the chronology of the western caves arises from our inability to fix the dates of the Andhrabhritya kings, but in his last letter Mr. Burgess informs me that he has collected an immense number of inscriptions at Karle and elsewhere, which he is examining with the assistance of Mr. Fleet, Dr. Biihler, and the Pandits, and he hopes to make even this point quite clear.
PREFACE. Xix
In fact, if the survey is carried on for another couple of years, which I earnestly hope and trust it will be, and with the same suc- cess which has hitherto attended its operations, there will not be a single cave in Western India whose date and destination may not be ascertained with all the requisite certainty, nor any antiquities of importance in the Bombay presidency that will not have been inves- tigated and described. Meanwhile, however, the present work may, at all events, serve to direct attention to the subject, and to some extent at least, supply a want which has long been felt by those interested in Indian archseology.
In order that readers may know exactly what part each of us took in the preparation of this book, it may be as well to explain that I wrote the whole of the first part (pp. 161), with the intention that it should serve as a general introduction to the whole, but at the same time Mr. Burgess contfibuted a certain number of pages, between 5 and 10 per cent, of the whole, even in this part.
In like manner the whole of the second part has been written by Mr. Burgess (pp. 162 to 512), but during its passage through the press I have interpolated even a greater proportion of pages on the various subjects of which it treats. Thus, as I have no reason to suppose there is any difference of opinion on any material point, the work may fairly be considered a combined production, for the whole of which we are jointly and severally responsible. I selected the whole of the woodcuts, and all the new ones were executed under my superintendence by Mr. Cooper. The whole of the plates, except the first, are reduced copies of a few from among the mass of drawings prepared by Mr. Burgess and his assistants during the progress of the survey, and were specially selected by him for this work to supply a want that had long been felt. At the present da}^ photographs and sketches of almost all the caves can be had by anyone who will take the trouble to collect them, but correct plans and architectural details, drawn to scale, can only be procured by persons who have time at their disposal, and instruments and assist- ants which are only available for such a survey as that conducted by Mr. Burgess. The plates have been very carefully executed in photo-lithography by Mr. Griggs, under Mr. Burgess' superintend- ence, and serve to place our knowledge of the cave architecture of Western India on a scientific basis never before attainable.
The woodcuts of the Raths at Mahavallipur are taken from a beautiful series of drawings of these curious monoliths prepared for
Y 132 C
XX PREfACfi.
me, at his own expense, by Mr. R. Chisholm, of the Public Works Department at Madras. I only regret that owing to various un- to TS'arcl delays they reached me so late that I was not able to avail myself of them to a greater extent than I have done.
James Fergussox. 20, Langham Place,
March 1880.
NOTE.
A word should be said about the mode of spelling Indian names adopted in this work. The rules recently adopted by Government for spelling names of places, and for the transliteration of Sanskrit and other Indian words, have generally been adhered to, but well established names have not often been interfered with. Where, how- ever, they have been spelt in a variety of ways, — and what Indian name has not ? — as Iloura, Yeloora, Elura, Elora, Ellorah, Elloora, Veroola, &c,, a compromise approximating to the local pronunciation has been used, as Elura, or the vernacular name has been adopted in Romanised form, with the broad or lonsf sounds of vowel -letters marked by a circumflex or caret, as Bhaja, Karle, Stupa, &c. The cerebral letters f, cj, fh, dli, n, need not disturb though they hardly convey much meaning to the English readers. They are the hard sounds of these letters and in constant use in our own language ; /• has been used freely for cl., as to many ears the sounds approxi- mate closely, being formed with the tip of the tongue on the palate, and 8 has a decidedly more delicate aspiration than s/i.
Adjectivals are formed in the Indian language by lengthening the vowels, thus from ^iva is formed the word ^aiva, denoting anything relating to ^iva or a member of the sect devoted to him ; so from Vishnu is formed Vaishnava ; from Buddha — Bauddha ; from Jina — Javim ; and from ^aldi — ^dlda. " Buddhist " has, however, been generally used throughout this work instead of Bauddha, as it has from long use become so much more familiar to English ears than its more correct Indian synonym. — J .B.
THE CAVE TEMPLES OF INDIA.
PART I.
THE EASTERN CAVES.
3
INTRODUCTION,
From the earliest period at whicli the mention of India dawns upon us, among the records of the past, her name has been sur- rounded by a halo of poetic mystery, which even the research and familiarity of modern times, have as yet failed to entirely dispel. Of her own history she tells us but little, and it was only in com- paratively modern times, when she came into contact with the more prosaic nations of the outer world, that we learned much regarding her former existence. So far as is at present known, no mention of India has yet been discovered among the records of Egypt or Assyria. No conquest of her country is recorded in the hieroglyphics that adorn the Temples of Thebes, nor been de- cyphered among the inscriptions on the walls of the palaces of Nineveh. It is even yet uncertain whether the Ophir or Tarshish to which the ships of Solomon traded and" brought back gold, and ivory, and algum " trees, and apes, and peacocks," can be considered as places in India, rather than some much nearer localities in Arabia or Africa. The earlier Greek writers had evidently no distinct ideas on the subject, and confounded India with Ethiopia in a manner that is very perplexing. It was not, in fact, till the time of the glorious raid of Alexander the Great, that the East and the "West came practi- cally into contact, and we obtain any distinct accounts, on which reliance can be placed, regarding that land which before his time was, to his countrymen, little more than a mythic dream. Fortu- nately, as we now know, the visit of the Greeks occurred at one of the most interesting periods of Indian history. It was just when the old Yedic period was passing away, to give place to the new Buddhist epoch ; when that religion was rising to the surface, which for nearly 1,000 years continued to be the prevailing faith of northern India, at least. Though after that period it disappeared from the land where it originated, it still continues to influence all the forms of religious belief in the surrounding countries, to the present day.
The gleam of light which the visit of the Greeks shed on the in- ternal state of India, though brilliant, was transitory. Before the
Y 132. Wt. P 801. A 2
4 INTRODUCTION.
great Mauryan dynasty which they found, or which they placed, on the throne of central India had passed away, her history relapsed, as before, into the same confused, undated, record of faineant kings, which continued almost down to the Moslem conquest, a tangle and perplexity to all investigators. It is only in rare instances that the problems it presents admit of a certain solution, while the records of the past, as they existed at the time when the Greeks visited the country, were, as may well be supposed, even more shadowy than they became in subsequent ages.
It is so strange that a country so early and so extensively civilised as India was, should have no written chronicles, that the causes that led to this strange omission deserve more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on the subject by the learned in Europe. The fact is the more remarkable, as Egypt on the one hand and China on the other, were among the most careful of all nations in recording dates and chronicling the actions of their earlier kings, and they did this notwithstanding all the difficulties of their hieroglyphic or symbolic writing, while India seems to have possessed an alphabet from an early date, which ought to have rendered her records easy to keep and still more easy to preserve. There seems in fact to be no intelligible cause why the annals of ancient India should not be as complete and satisfactory as those of any other country in a similar state of civilisation, unless it lies in the poetic tem- perament of its inhabitants, and the strange though picturesque variety of the races who dwell within her boundaries, but whose manifold diifferences seem at all times to have been fatal to that unity which alone can produce greatness or stability among nations.
AU this is the more strange, for, looked at on the map, India appears one of the most homogeneous and perfectly defined coun- tries in the world. On the east, the ocean and impenetrable jungles shut her out from direct contact with the limitrophe nations on that side, while in the north the Himalayas forms a practically impassible barrier against the inhabitants of the Thibetan plains. On the west the ocean and the valley of the Indus equally mark the physical features which isolate the continent of India, and mark her out as a separate seK-contained country. Within these boun- daries there are no great barriers, no physical features, that divide the land into separate well defined provinces, in which we might expect difierent races to be segregated under different forms of
ETHNOGRAPHY. 5
government. There seems certainly no physical reason why India, like China, should not always have been one country, and governed, at least, at times, by one dynasty. Yet there is no record of any such event in her annals. Asoka, in the third century B.C., may have united the whole of the north of India under his sway, but nothing of the sort seems again to have occurred till nearly 2,000 years afterwards, when the Moguls under Akbar and Aurangzib nearly accomplished what it has been left for us, to carry practically into effect. During the interval, India seems to have been divided into five great divisions, nearly corresponding to our five presidencies, existing as separate kingdoms and ruled by different kings, each supreme over a host of minor kinglets or chiefs, among whom the country was divided. At times, one of the sovereigns, of one of the five Indias, was acknowledged as lord paramount, nominally at least, bat the country never was united as a whole, capable of taking a place among the great monarchies of the earth, and making its influence felt among surrounding nations. It never, indeed, was so organised as to be capable of resisting any of the invaders who from time to time forced the boundary of the Indus, and poured their hordes into her fertile and much-coveted plains. It is, indeed, to this great fact that we owe all that wonderful diversity of peoples we find in India, and, whether for good or for evil, render the popu- lation of that country as picturesquely various, as that of China is tamely uniform. It is this very variety, however, that renders it so difficult for even those who have long studied the question, on the spot, to master the problem in all its complexity of detail. It un- fortunately, too, becomes, in consequence, almost impossible to con- vey to those who have not had these advantages, any clear ideas on the subject, which is nevertheless both interesting and instruc- tive, though difficult and complex, and requiring more study than most persons are able or inclined to bestow upon it.
Ethnography.
The great difficulty of writing anything very clear or consecutive regarding Indian ethnography or art arises principally from the fact that India was never inhabited by one, but in all historical times, by at least three distinct and separate races of mankind. These occa- sionally existed and exist in their original native purity, but at others are mixed together and commingled in varying proportions
6 INTRODUCTION.
to such an extent as almost to defy analysis, and to render it almost impossible at times to say what belongs to one race, what to another. Notwithstanding this, the main outlines of the case are tolerably clear, and can be easily grasped to an extent at least suffi- cient to explain the artistic development of the various styles of art, that existed in former times in various parts of the country.
When the Aryans, descending from the plateau of central Asia, first crossed the Indus to occupy the plains of the Panjab, they found the country occupied by a race of men apparently in a very low state of civilisation. These they easily subdued, calling them Dasijus^ and treated as their name implies as a subject or slave population. In the more fertile parts of the country, where the Aryans established themselves, they probably in the course of time assimilated this native population with themselves, to a great degree at least. They still however exist in the hills between Silhet and Asam, and throughout the Central Provinces, as nearly in a state of nature ^ as they could have existed when the Aryans first intruded on their domains, and drove the remnants of them into the hills and jungle fastnesses, where they are still to be found. Whoever they were these Dasyus may be considered as the aboriginal population of India. At least we have no knowledge whence they came nor when. But all their affinities seem to be with the Himalayan and trans- Himalayan races, and they seem to have spread over the whole of what we now know as the province of Bengal, though how far they ever extended towards Cape Comorin we have now no means of knowing.
The second of these great races are the Dravidians, who now occupy the whole of the southern part of the peninsula, as far north at least as the Krishna river, and at times their existence can be traced in places almost up to the Nerbudda. It has been clearly made out by the researches of Bishop Caldwell ^ and others that they belong to the great Turanian family of mankind, and have affinities with the Finns and other races who inhabit the countries almost up to the shores of the North Sea. It is possible also that it may be
1 Confr. V. de St. Martin, Geoff. du Veda, pp. 82, 99.
2 Gen. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnography of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), is by far the best and most exhaustive work on the subject.
3 Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages by Bishop Caldwell, 2nd edit., 1875.
ETHNOGRAPHY. 7
found that tliey are allied to the Accadian races who formed the sub- stratum of the population in Babylonia in very ancient times. It is not however known when they first entered India, nor by what road. Generally it is supposed that it was across the Lower Indus, because affinities have been traced between their language and that of the Brahms, who occupy a province of Baluchistan. It may be, however, that the Brahuis are only an outlying portion of the ancient inhabi- tants of Mesopotamia, and may never have had any direct communi- cation further east. Certain it is that neither they nor any of the Dravidian families have aUy tradition of their having entered India by this road, and they have left no traces of their passage in Sindh or in any of the countries to the north of the Nerbudda or Taptee. On the other hand, it seems so improbable that they could have come by sea from the Persian Gulf in sufficient numbers to have peopled the large tract that they now occupy, that we must hesitate before adopting such an hypothesis. When their country is first mentioned in the traditions on which the Bdmdyana is based, it seems to have been an uncultivated forest, and its inhabitants in a low state of civilisation.^ In the time of Asoka, however (b.c. 250), we learn from his inscriptions, confirmed by the testimony of classical authors, that the Dravidians had settled into that triarchy of kingdoms, the Chola, Chera, and Pandya, which endured till very recent times. From their architecture we know that these states afterwards de- veloped into a comparatively high state of civilisation.
The third and by far the most illustrious and important of the three races were the Aryans, or Sanskrit speaking races, who may have entered India as long ago as 3,000 years - before the Christian era.^ In the course of time — it may have taken them 2,000 years to effect it — they certainly occupied the whole of India north of the Vindhya mountains, as far as the shores of the Bay of Bengal, entirely
1 See Indian Antiquary, vol. viii. pp. 1-10.
2 Confr. V. de St. Martin, Geog. du Veda, p. 9.
3 I have always looked upon it as probable that the era 3101 years before Christ, which the Aryans adopt as the Era oi the Kali Yug, may be a true date marking some important epoch in their history. But whether this was the passage of the Indus in their progress eastward, or some other important epoch in their earlier history, it seems impossible now to determine. It may, however, be only a factitious epoch arrived at by the astronomers, computing backwards to a general conjunction of the planets, which they seem to have believed took place at that time. Colebrooke's Essays, vol. i., p. 201 ; vol. ii., pp. 357, 475.
8 IXTRODUCTIOX.
superseding the native Dasyus and driving the Dravidians, if they ever occupied any part of the northern country, into the southern portion, or what is now known as the Madras Presidency. There never was any attempt, so far as is known, on the part of the Aryans to exterminate the original inhabitants of the land. They seem on the contrary to have used them as herdsmen or cultivators of the soil, but they superseded their religion by their own higher and purer faith, and obliterated, by their superiority, all traces of any peculiar civi- lisation they may have possessed. At the same time, though they never seem to have attempted physically, to conquer or colonise the south, they did so intellectually. Colonies of Brahmans from the northern parts of India introduced the literature and religion of the Aryans into the country of the Dravidians, and thus produced a uniformity of culture, which at first sight looks like a mingling of race. Fortunately their architecture and their arts enable us to detect at a glance how essentially different they were, and have always remained. Notwithstanding this, the intellectual superiority of the Aryans made so marked an impression during long ages on their less highly organised Turanian neighbours in the south, that without some such material evidence to the contrary, it might be contended that the fusion was complete.
There are no doubt many instances where families and even tribes of each of these three races still remain in India, keeping apart from the rest, and retaining the purity of their blood to a wonderful extent. But as a rule they are so mixed in locality and so com- mingled in blood, that it is extremely difficult, at times, to define the limits of relationship that may exist between any one of the various peoples of India mth those among whom they are residing. Their general relationships are felt by those who are familiar with the sub- ject, but in the present state of our knowledge it is almost impossible to define and reduce them into anything like a scientific classifi- cation, and it certainly is not necessary to attempt anything of the sort in this place. The main features of Indian ethnography are distinct and easily comprehended, so that there is little difficulty in following them, and they are so distinctly marked in the architecture and religion of the people, that they mutually illustrate each other with sufficient clearness, for our present purposes at least. No one, for instance, at all familiar with the [subject, can fail to recognise at a glance the many-storeyed pyramidal temples of the Dravidians,
HISTORY. ^ 9
and to distinguish them from the curvilinear outlined towers uni- versally employed by the northern people, speaking languages derived from the Sanskrit. Nor when he has recognised these can he hesitate in believing that, when any given temple was erected, the country was either inhabited, in the one case by Dravidians, or by an Aryan people, more or less, it may be, mixed up with the blood of the native Dasyus ;^ but in either case the architecture marks the greater or less segregation of the race, by the purity with which the distinctive features of the style are carried out in each particular instance.
History.
From the Greek historians we learn that at the time of Alexander the falsification of Indian history had only gone the length of dupli- cation. If we assume the Kaliyug, 3101 b.c, to represent the first immigration of the Aryans, the time that elapsed between that epoch and the accession of Chandragupta is, as nearly as may be, one half of the period, 6,042 years ^ during which Aryan tells us 153 monarchs succeeded one another on the throne of India. As this is as nearly as may be the number of kings whose names are recorded in the Puranas, we may fairly assume that the lists we now possess are the same as those which were submitted to the Greeks, while as according to this theory the average of each king's reign was little more than 18 years, there is no inherent improbability in the statement. It is more difficult to understand the historian when he goes on to say, " During all this time the Indians had only the liberty of being governed by their own laws twice. First for about 300 years, and after that for 120." ^ If this means that at two difierent epochs during these 30 or rather 28 centuries the Dasyus had asserted their independence it would be intelligible enough. It may have been so. They had, however, no literature of their own, and could not consequently record the fact, and their Brahmanical masters were hardly likely to narrate this among the very few historical events they deign to record. If, however, it should turn out to be so, it is the one fact in Dasyu ancient history that has come down to our days.
1 See History of Indian Architecture, p. 210 et seq., 319 e^ seq. in passim.
2 hidicay chap. ix. ^ Loc. cit.
10 INTRODUCTION.
The ancient history of the Dravidian race is nearly as barren as that of the Dasyus. It is true we have long lists of names of Pandyan kings, but when they commence is extremely doubtful. There is no one king in any of the lists whose date can be fixed within a century, nor any event recorded connected with any of these faineant kings which can be considered as certain. It is not indeed till inscriptions and buildings come to our aid after the 5th or 6th century of our era, that anything like history dawns upon us. Between that time and the 10th or 11th century we can grope our way with tolerable certainty, and by the aid of synchronisms with the other dynasties obtain a fair knowledge of what was passing in the south some 8 or 10 centuries ago.^
Though all this is most unsatisfactory from an historical point of view, it fortunately is of comparatively little consequence for the purposes of this work. It does not appear that the Dravidians ever adopted the Buddhist religion, to any extent at least, and never certainly were excavators of caves. The few examples that exist in their country, such as those at Undavalli and Mahavallipur, are quite exceptional, and though extremely interesting from that very cause, would hardly be more so, if we knew more of the history of the gr eat dynasties of the country in which they are situated. They are not the expression of any national impulse, but the works of some local dynasties impelled to erect them under some excep- tional circamstances, we do not now know, and may never be quite able to understand.
We are thus for our history thrown back on the great Aryan Sanskrit-speaking race of northern India, and f or]our present purposes need not trouble ourselves to investigate the history of the long line of Solar kings. These from their first advent held sway in Ayodhya (the modern Oudh), till the time of the Malid BMrata when, about 12 centuries before the Christian era, they were forced to make way to their younger but less pure cousins of the Lunar line. Even then we may confine our researches to the rise of the Sisunaga dynasty in the 7th century B.C., as it was under one of the earlier kings of this dynasty that Sakya Muni was born about 560 B.C., and with this event our architectural history practically begins.
It is fortunate we may be spared this long investigation, for even the much lauded Vedas, though invaluable from a philological or
1 Wilson, Essay J. R. A. S., vol. iii. p, 199, et seq.
HISTORY. 11
etlinograpliic point of view, are absolutely worthless in so far as chronology and history are concerned, while the Epics on which the bulk of our knowledge of the ancient history of India is based, present it in so poetic a garb that it is difficult to extract the small re- siduum of fact its passioned strophes may contain. For the rest of our ancient history we are forced to depend on the Purdnas, which have avowedly been falsified in order to present the history subsequently to the MaJmblidrata or great wars of the Pandus as a prophecy delivered by the sage Yyasa who lived contemporaneously with that event. In this case it happens that a prophecy written after the events it describes, is nearly as unreliable, as writings of the same class, that pretend to foresee what may happen in the future.
Had any fragments of contemporary Buddhist literature survived the great cataclysm that destroyed that religion in the 7th and 8th centuries of our era, we would probably know all that we now are searching for in vain. We know at all events that in the Buddhist island of Ceylon they kept records which when condensed into the history of the Mahdwanso ^ present a truthful and consecutive narrative of events. Meagre it may be, in its present form, but no doubt capable of almost infinite extension if the annals of the monasteries still exist, and were examined with care. In like manner we have in the half Buddhist country of Kashmir, in the Bdja Tarangini the only work in any Indian language which, as the late Professor "Wilson said, is entitled to be called a history.^ If such works as these are to be found on the outskirts of the Buddhist kingdom, it can hardly be doubted that even fuller records existed in its centre. We have indeed indications in Hiuen Thsang ^ that in the great monastery of Nalanda the annals of the central kingdom of Magadha were in his time preserved with all the care that could be desired. The Chinese pilgrims, however, who visited India between the 4th and 7th centuries were essentially priests. They came to visit the places sanctified by the presence and actions of the founder of their religion, and to gather together on the spot the traditions relating to him and his early disciples. Beyond this their great object was to collect the books containing the doctrines and discipline of the sect. Secular affairs and political events had no attraction for these pilgrims of
1 Translated by the Hon. Geo. Turnour, 1 vol. 4to., Colombo, 1837.
2 Ti-anslated by Wilson, Asiatic Researches, vol. xv. p. 1, e< seqq.
3 Hitten Thsang, translated by Stanislas JuUen, vol. iii. p. 41, et seq.
12
INTRODUCTION.
the faith, and they pass them over with the most supercilious indiffe- rence. It is true nevertheless that the great encyclopaedia of Ma- twan-lin does contain a vast amount of information regarding the mediaeval history of India, but as this has not yet been translated it is hardly available for our present purposes.^
Religions.
The religions of India are even more numerous than her races, and at least as difficult to describe and define, if not more so, as the two classes of phenomena are by no means conterminous, and often mix and overlap one another in a manner that is most perplexing. Yet the main outlines of the case are clear enough, and may be described in a very few words with sufficient clearness for our present purposes at all events.
First comes, of course, the religion of the great immigrant Aryan race, embodied in the hymns of the Vedas, and consequently called the Vedic. It seems to have been brought from the regions of Central Asia, and it and its modified forms were, to say the least of it, the dominant religion in India down to the middle of the third century before Christ. At that time Asoka adopted the religion of Buddha and made it the religion of the State, in the same manner that Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman world, at about the -same distance of time from the death of its founder.
For nearly 1,000 years Buddhism continued to be the State religion of the land, though latterly losing much of its purity and power, till the middle of the seventh century of our era, when it sunk, and shortly afterwards disappeared entirely, before the rising star of the modern Hindu form of faith. This last was a resuscita- tion of the old Yedic religion, or at least pretended to be founded on
1 This Avas partially done by the late M. Pauthier, and his extracts republished, 1837, iu the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. vi. p. 61, ct seq., and Journal Asiatiq lie, 1839; also partially by M. Stan. Julieu in the Journal Asiatiquc and by M. Favre. These, however, are only meagre extracts, and not edited with the knowledge since acquired. There are scholars willing to undertake the task of trans- lation, but the difficulty is to obtain a copy of the original work. There are several in the British Museum, but the rules of that establishment do not admh of their being lent outside their walls, and as the would-be translatoi-s live at a distance, we must wait till this obstacle is removed before we can benefit by the knowledge we might thus attain.
RELIGIONS. 1 3
the Vedas, but so mixed up with local superstitions, and so overlaid with the worship of Siva and Vishnu, and all the 1001 gods of the Hindu Pantheon, that the old element is hardly recognisable in the present popular forms of belief. It is now the religion of upwards of 150,000,000 of the inhabitants of India.
Jainism is another form of faith which sprung up contempo- raneously with Buddhism, and perhaps even a little earlier, for the date of nirvana of Mahdvira, the lasfc of the Tirthankars or prophets of the Jains, is 526 B.C., and consequently earlier than that of Buddha. It never rose, however, to be either a popular or a State religion till after the fall of its sister faith, when in many parts of India it superseded Buddhism, and now, in some districts, takes the place that was formerly occupied by its rival.
It would, of course, be vain to look for any written evidence of the religion of the Dasyus during the long period in which they have formed an important element in the population of Hindostan. They always were too illiterate to write anything themselves, and their masters despised them and their superstitions too thoroughly to record anything regarding them. "What we do know is con- sequently only from fragments encrusted in the other and more advanced faiths, or from the practices of the people where they exist in tolerable purity in the remote districts of the country at the present day. From these we gather that they were Tree and Serpent worshippers, and their principal deity was an earth god, to whom they offered human sacrifices till within a very recent period. They seem too to have practised all kinds of fetish worship, as most men do, in their early and rude state of civilisation.^
The great interest to us, for the purposes of the present work, is, that if there had been no Dasyus in India, it is probable there would have been no Buddhist religion either there or elsewhere. Though Buddha himself was an Aryan of pure Solar race, and his
1 In his Hihbert Lectures Professor Max Miiller points out with perfect correctness, that the Aryans in India never were fetish worshippers, and argues, that as no fetishism is found in the Vedas, therefore it never existed, at least anywhere in India. From his narrow point of view his logic is unassailable, but he entirely overlooks the fact, that only a very small portion of the population of India ever was Aryan, or in their earlv stages knew anything of the Vedas. Nine-tenths of the population are of Turanian origin, and judging from the results, indulged in more degrading fetish worship than is to be found among the savages in Africa and America till partially cured of these practices by contact with the Aryans.
14 INTRODUCTION.
earliest disciples were Brahmans, still, like Christianity, Buddhism was never really adopted by those by whom and for whom, it first was promulgated. It was, however, eventually adopted by vast masses of the casteless tribes of India, and by mere weight of numbers they seem for a long time to have smothered and kept under the more intellectual races of the land. It always was, however, and now is, a religion of a Turanian people, and never was professed, to any marked extent, by any people of pure Aryan race.
As we do not know exactly what the form of the religion of the Dasyus really was, we cannot positively assert, though it seems most probable that it was the earliest existing in India ; but at the same time, it is quite certain that the Yedic is the most ancient cultus of which we have any written or certain record in that country. It was based on the worship of the manifestations of a soul or spirit in nature. Their favourite gods were Indra, the god of the firmament, who gave rain and thundered ; Yaruna, the Uranos of the Greeks, the " aU-enveloper," the king of gods, upholding and knowing all, and guardian of immortality ; Agni, the god of fire and light ; Ushas, the dawn ; Yayu and the Maruts or winds ; the Sun, addressed as Savitri, Surya, Yishnu; and other less distinctly defined personifications. The service of these gods was at first probably simple enough, con- sisting of prayers, praises, libations, and sacrifices. The priests, however, eventually elaborated the most complicated ritual probably ever invented, and of course, as in other rituals, they arrogated to themselves, through the proper performance of these rites, powers, not only superhuman, but even super-divine, compelling even the gods themselves to submit to their wills.
The system of caste — an essential feature of Brahmanism — had become hard and fast as early at least as the sixth century before Christ, and was felt, especially among the lower castes, to be an intolerable yoke of iron. Men of all castes — often of very low ones — in revolt against its tyranny, separated themselves from their kind, and lived lives of asceticism, despising caste as something beneath the consideration of a devotee who asj)ired to rise by the merits of his own works and penances to a position where he might claim future felicity as a right. The Tirthakas and others of this class, perhaps as early as the seventh century B.C., threw aside aU clothing, sat exposed to sun and rain on ant-hills or dung-heaps, or, clothed in bark or in an antelope hide, sought the recesses of forests
RELIGIONS. 15
and on mountain peaks, to spend their days apart from the world and its vanities, in order to win divine favour or attain to the power of gods.
The founder of Buddhism was one of these ascetics. Gautama '* the Buddha " was the son of a king of Kapilavastu, a small state in the north of Oudh, born apparently in the sixth century B.C. At the age of 29 he forsook his palace with its luxuries, his wife and infant child, and became a devotee, sometimes associating with others of the class in their forest abodes in Behar, and sometimes wandering alone, and, unsatisfied with the dreamy con- jectures of his teachers, seeking the solution of the mystery of existence. After some six years of this life, while engaged in a long and strict fast under a pipal tree near Gaya, wearied by exhaustion like the North American Indian seers, he fell into a trance, during which, as he afterwards declared, he attained to Buddhi or " per- fected knowledge," and issued forth as the Buddha or " enlightened," the great teacher of his age. He is called by his followers Sakya Muni — the Muni or ascetic of the Sakya race ; the Jina, or " van- quisher " of sins ; Sakya Sinha, " the lion of the Sakyas ; " Tatha- gata, " who came in the same way " as the previous Buddhas, &c. He celebrated the attainment of the Buddahood in the stanzas —
Through various transmigrations
Have I passed (without discovering)
The builder I seek of the abode (of the passions).
Painful are repeated births !
0 house builder ! I have seen (thee). No house shalt thou again build me ; Thy rafters are broken,
Thy ridge-pole is shattered,
My mind is freed (from outward objects).
1 have attained the extinction of desires.^
With its dogma of metempsychosis, Yedantism and Brahmanism provided no final rest, no permanent peace ; for to be bom again, even in the highest heaven, was still to be under the empire of the law of change, and consequently of further sufiering in some still future birth. Hence it had created and fostered the thirst for final death or annihilation as the only escape from this whirlpool of
^ For Gogerly's version as well as Tumour's, see Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, pp. 180, 181.
16 INTRODUCTION.
miseries. The mission Sakya Muni, now at the age of 35, set before himself as the proper work of a Buddha, was to minister to this passion for extinction ; to point out a new religious path for the deliverance of men from the endless series of transmigrations they had been taught it was their doom to pass through, and to be the liberator of humanity from the curse of the impermanency, sorrow, and unreality of existence. His royal extraction, his commanding dignity and persuasive eloquence, the gentleness of his manners, his ardour and self-denying austerities, the high morality and the spirit of universal kindness that pervaded his teaching, fascinated the crowds, and he soon attracted enthusiastic disciples who caught something of the fire of their master's enthusiasm, and who were sent forth to propagate his new doctrines.
Caste he set aside : " My Law," said Buddha, " is a law of grace for all." Belief in his doctrines and obedience to his precepts was, for Sudra and Dasyu as for the Brahman, the only and the wide door to the order of " the perfect." By the lower castes, whom the Brahmans had first arbitrarily degraded and then superciliously despised; such teaching would naturally be welcomed as a timely . deliverance from the spiritual, intellectual, and social despotism of '^' the higher classes. For them, evidently, and the despised aboriginal tribes, it was most specially adapted, and among such it was sure to find its widest acceptance.
Accompanied by his disciples, Gautama wandered about from place to place, principally in Gangetic India, subsisting on the oflPerings placed in his alms-bowl, or the provision afforded him by his wealthier converts, teaching men the emptiness and vanity of all sensible things, and pointing out the paths that led to Nirvana or final quiescence, " the city of peace," scarcely, if at all, distin- guished from annihilation. After 45 years thus spent, Sakya Muni died in the north of Gorakhpur district, in Bengal. His disciples burnt his body and collected his relics, which were distributed among eight different cities, where they afterwards became objects of worship.
Springing as it did from Brahmanism, of which it might be regarded as only a modification, or one of its many sects or schools, Buddhism did not at first separate from the older religion so as to assume a position of hostility to it, insult its divinities, or disparage its literature. It grew up slowly, and many of its earlier and most
RELIGIONS. 17
distinguished converts were Brahmans. Thougli its founder had made many disciples during his hfetime, and sent them out to propagate his religion, it was not till the conversion of the great emperor A^oka that it acquired any political importance ; under his royal favour and patronage it spread widely. He is represented as having lavished the resources of his realm on the Buddhist religion and on buildings in honour of its founder, who by that time had become almost mythical in his wonderful travels and teaching, the number of his discourses being reckoned at 84,000, and nearly every place in India having some legend of his having visited it.
The Buddhist traditions are full of the name of Asoka as the founder of viharas or monasteries, stupas or dagobas, asylums, and other religious and charitable works. " At the places at which the Vanquisher of the five deadly sins (^^e. Buddha) had worked the works of his mission," says the Ceylon Chronicle,^ " the sovereign (Asoka) caused splendid dagobas to be constructed. From 84,000 cities (of which Eajagriha was the centre) despatches were brought on the same day, announcing that the viharas were completed." After a great council of the Buddhist priesthood, held in the 17th year of his reign, 246 B.C., missionaries were sent out to propagate the religion in the ten following countries, whose position we are able, even now, to ascertain with very tolerable precision from their existing denominations: — (1) Kasmira; (2) Gandhara or Kandahar; (3) Mahisamanclala or Maisur; (4) Vanavasi in Kanara; (5) Apa- rantaka — ' the Western Country ' or the Konkan, — the missionary being Yavana-Dharmarakshita ; — the prefix Yavana apparently in- dicative of his being a Grreek, or foreigner at least ; (6) Maharatta or the Dekhan ; (7) The Yavana country, — perhaps Baktria ; (8) Hima- vanta or Nepal ; (9) Suvamabhumi or Burma ; and (10) Ceylon. His own son Mahendra and daughter Sanghamitra were sent with the mission to Cfeylon, taking with them a graft of the Bodhi tree at Buddha Graya under which Buddha was supposed to have attained the supreme knowledge.
In two inscriptions from Sahasram and Rupnath, recently trans- lated,^ Asoka mentions that in the 33rd year, " after he had become a hearer of the law," and " entered the community " (of ascetics)
1 Tumour's Mahdvanso, p. 34.
2 Dr. Biihler in Ind. Ant., vol. vi. p. 149, and vol. vii. pp. 141-160.
y 132.
18 INTRODUCTION.
he had exerted himself so strenuously in behalf of his new faith, that the gods who previously " were considered to be true in Jambud- bipa " had, in the second year afterwards (b.c. 226-5), been abjured.
To him, as already mentioned, the first Buddhist structures owe their origin. These were principally shipas or ddgohas, that is, monu- mental shrines or receptacles for the relics of Buddha himself, or of the Sthaviras, or patriarchs of the sect, — consisting of a cylindrical base, supporting a hemispherical dome, called the garhlm. On the top of this was placed a square stone box, commonly called a Tee, usually solid, covered by a series of thin slabs, each projecting over the one below it, and with an umbrella raised over the whole. These stupas were erected, however, not only as monuments over relics, but set up also wherever any legend associated the locality with a visit or discourse of Buddha's — which practically came to be wherever there were a few Buddhist Bhikshus desirous of securing an easy livelihood from the neighbouring villagers : — for legends are easily invented in India. Asoka erected many of these over the length and breadth of his extensive dominions and raised great monolithic pillars, inscribed with edicts, intended to promulgate the spread of Buddhism. Edicts were also incised on rocks at Kapurdigiri near Peshawar, at Mount Grimar in Kathiawar, in Orissa, Ganjam, and the Upper Provinces. The stupas or topes at Bhilsa, Sarnath near Banaras, Manikyala in the Panjab, and elsewhere, are examples of that class of monuments, of which there are also gigantic specimens in Ceylon, erected by Devanampriya Tishya, the contemporary of Asoka, and his successors. But these belong rather to a general history of Indian architecture than to a work especially devoted to the caves.^
The Buddhist Bhikshus thus soon became very numerous, and possessed regularly organised monasteries, or ViMras, in which they spent the rainy season, studying the sacred books and practising a temperate asceticism. " The holy men were not allowed seats of costly cloth, nor umbrellas made of rich material with handles adorned with gems and pearls, nor might they use fragrant sub- stances, or fish gills and bricks for rubbers in the bath, except, in- deed, for their feet. Garlic, toddy, and all fermented liquors were
1 For an account of the stupas at Sanchi and Amravati, see Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, and Cunningham's Bhilsa Topes ; also Fergusson's Indian and Eastern Architecture, pp. 54, 60-65, 71-72, 92, 105 ; and for Sarnath, ibid. pp. 65, 68, 173, and Sherring's Sacred City of the Hindus, p. 230 ff.
RELIGIONS. 19
forbidden, and no food permitted after midday. Music, dancing, and attendance upon such amusements were forbidden." ^ And, though seal rings or stamps of gold were prohibited, they might use stamps of baser metal, the device being a circle with two deer on opposite sides, and below the name of the vihara.
Buddhism, after this, flourished and spread for centuries. Chinese pilgrims came to India to visit the spots associated with the founder's memory, to learn its doctrines, and carry away books containing its teachings. In the seventh century of our era it had begun to decline in some parts of India ; in the eighth apparently it was rapidly dis- appearing : and shortly after that it had vanished from the greater part of India, though it still lingered about Banaras and in Bengal where the Pala dynasty, if not Buddhists themselves, at least tolerated it extensively in their dominions.^ It existed also at some points on the West coast, perhaps till the eleventh century or even later. It has been thought that it was extinguished by Brahmanical perse- cution, and in some places such means may have been used to put it down ; but the evidence does not seem sufficient to prove that force was generally resorted to. Probably its decline and final extinction was to a large extent owing to the ignorance of its priests, the corrup- tions of its early doctrines, especially after the rise of the Mahayana sect, the multiplicity of its schisms, and its followers becoming mixed up with the Jains, whose teachings and ritual are very similar, or from its followers falling into the surrounding Hinduism of the masses. Except in the earliest ages of its existence it probably never was predominant in India, and alongside it, during its whole duration, Saivism continued to flourish and to hold, as it does still, the alle- giance of the majority of the lower castes.
Rock temples and residences for Buddhist ascetics are early referred to. Mahendra, the son of Asoka, on his arrival in Ceylon, erected a vihara on the summit of the Mihintala mountain, where he caused 68 cells to be cut out in the rock, which still exist at the Ambustella
1 Mrs. Speirs' Life in Ancient India, p. 317.
2 The date of the Pala dynasty has not been ascertained with accuracy. Abul Fazl in the Ayin Akbari assigns 689 years to their 10 reigns, which, however, is evidently too much. The most complete list is that inserted by General Cunningham in his Beports, vol. iii. p. 134, based on a comparison of the written authorities, with their existing inscriptions on copper and stone. He represents them as 18 kings, reigning from 765 to 1200, a.d., which is probably very near the truth.
B 2
20 INTRODUCTION.
dagoba.^ "We find also at Barabar (near Gaya) in Bibar, several caves witb inscriptions upon tbem, witb dates upon tbem of tbe 12tb and 19tb years of Asoka bimself, or in 251 and 244 b.c.^
We bave no means of knowing wbat tbe primitive religion of tbe Dravidians was before tbeir country was colonised by tbe Brabmans of tbe nortb, wbo imported witb tbem tbe worsbip of Siva and Visbnu and all tbe multitudinous Gods of tbe modem Hindu Pantbeon. It is probable tbat before tbat time, tbe Dravidians did possess a Pantbeon distinct from tbat of tbeir nortbem neigbbours, but so little bas tbe comparative mytbology of India been bitberto studied, tbat it is impossible now to say bow mucb of tbe present religion of tbe country is a foreign importation, bow mucb an indigenous local growtb. Siva is, and apparently as far as our information goes, seems always to bave been, tbe favourite deity in tbe Soutb, and bis name and tbat of bis consort is mixed up witb so many legends, and tbese extend so far back, tbat it almost looks as if bis worsbip sprung up tbere. On tbe otber band, tbe earliest autbentic mention of Siva is by a Greek autbor, Bardasanes, wbo describes bim as worsbipped in a cave not far from Pesbawiir in tbe early part of tbe tbird century, under tbe well-known form of tbe Ardbanari, or balf man balf woman.^ He is also found unmistake- ably represented on tbe coins of Kadpbises ^ witb bis trident and bull, before tbe Cbristian era, and it is not clear wbetber tbese are fragments of mytbology left tbere by tbe Dravidians, dropped like tbe Brabui language, on tbeir way to India, or wbetber it is a local nortbem cult wbicb tbe Brabmans brougbt witb tbem into India, and finally transported to tbe soutb. ^
Tbougb tbe worsbip of Visbnu is as fasbionable and nearly as extensively prevalent in modern times, in tbe soutb, as tbat of Siva, it certainly never arose among tbe Dravidian races. It is essentially a cultus tbat could only bave its origin among tbe same people as tbose from wbom tbe Buddbist religion first took its present form. It is in fact at tbe present day only a very corrupt form of tbat religion, so corrupt, indeed, tbat tbeir common origin is
1 Tumour's Mahdvano, pp. 103, 123 ; Emerson Tennent's Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 607.
2 Jour. As. Soc. Ben., vol. vi. p. 671. Cunningham Reports, vol. i. p. 44 If.
3 Stcebus' Physica. Gainsford edition, p. 54.
4 Wilson's Ariana Antiqua, Plate X. ^ See Kittel's Lingacultus.
CHRONOLOGY. 21
hardly to be recognised in its new disguise,^ but still undoubtedly springing from a cognate source, though very far from emulating either the virtue or the purity of its elder sister faith. Borrowing apparently a cosmogony from Assyria, Yishnuism separated itself from Buddhism, attracting to itself most of the local superstitions that had crept into that religion, and finally becoming fused by the all powerful solvent of the Vedas, it forms a powerful element in the modern Brahmanical religion as now existing in India.^
It is only now that we are beginning to see, dimly it must be confessed, the mode in which all the conflicting and discordant elements of the present Hindu religion were gathered from 1,000 sources, and fused into the present gigantic superstition. The materials, however, probably now exist which would enable any competent scholar to reduce the whole to order, and give us an intelligible account of the origin and growth of this form of faith. The task, however, has not been attempted in recent times. When Moor's^ and Coleman's* works were written, sufficient knowledge of the subject was not available to enable this to be done satis- factorily, but now an exhaustive work on the subject could easily be compiled, and would be one of the most valuable contributions we could have, to our knowledge of the ethnography as well as of the moral and intellectual status of the 250,000,000 of the inhabitants of a land teeming with beauty and interest.
Chronology.
As the Buddhists were beyond all shadow of doubt the earliest excavators of caves in India, and also, so far as we now know, the first to use stone as an architectural building material in that country, it will be sufficient for the purposes of this work to con- fine our researches in Indian chronology to the period subsequent to the reigns of the two kings Bimbasara and Ajatasatru. It was in the 16th year of the first-named king that Sakya Muni, then in
1 How Buddhism may be transmogrified may be learnt from the tenets and practices of the Ahyantra sect in Nepal.
2 The facts refeiTing to the ethnography and religion of India are stated more fully than it is necessary to do here in the introduction to my History of Indian Architec- ture, 1876, to which the reader is referred for further information. — J., F.
3 Hindu Pantheon, 4to., Plates, London, 1810. * Mythology of the Hindus, 4to., Plates, 1832.
22 IKTRODUCTIOX.
his 35th year, attained Buddhahood, B.C. 526, and died in the 8th year of the reign of the last-named king, 481 years b.c.^
From this point down to the Christian era there is no great difficulty with regard to Indian chronology, and it may be as well, in so far as the j&rst part of this work is concerned, to confine our investigations to these limits. Certain it is that no architectural cave was excavated in India before the Nirvana, and no king's name has even traditionally been connected with any cave in Eastern India whose ascertained date is subsequent to the Christian era. Indeed, in so far as the Bengal caves are concerned, we might almost stop with the death of Yrihadratha, the last of the Mauryans, 180 B.C., all the names connected with any caves being found among the kings of the earlier dynasties, if at all.
When we come to speak of the western or southern caves, in the second part of this work, it will be necessary to pursue these investigations to more modem dates, but this will be better done when we come to describe the caves themselves, and then try to ascertain the dates of the local dynasties to which each indi- vidual series of caves practically owes its origin.
As a foundation for the whole, and for our present purposes, it will probably be sufficient to state that the Buddhist accounts generally are agreed that $akya Muni, the founder of their religion, died in the 8th year of Ajatasatru, king of Magadha or Bihar, and that 162 years elapsed between that event and the rise of the Maurya dynasty. This dynasty, as is well known, was founded by Chandragupta, the Sandrakottos of the G-reeks, to whose court Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus as an ambassador, and who, taking advantage of the unsettled state of India after the invasion of Alexander of Macedon, had, by the aid of an astute Brahman, named Yishnugupta Dramila,^
1 When previously writing on this subject, I have always adopted the Ceylonese date 543 B.C. as that of the Nirvana as the most likely to be the correct one, according to the information then available. I was of course aware that so long ago as 1837 Turnour had pointed out {J.A.S.B., vol. vi. p. 716 ei seq.) that there was a discrepancy in the pre-Mauryan chronology of Ceylon, of about 60 years. But how that was to be rectified he could not explain. I do not yet despair of some new solution being found, but meanwhile the discovery of the Rupnath and Sahasram inscriptions — both of the time of Asoka — point so distinctly to the date of the Nirvana given in the text, 61 or 68 later than the usually accepted date, that for the present at least it seems impossible to adopt any other. — J. F.
- He is often designated by the patronymic Chanakya, or by the epithet Kautilya '* the Crafty." See Wilson's works, vol. xii. p. 127 et seqq.
CHRONOLOGY. 23
raised himself to the throne of Northern India somewhere between 320 and 315 b.c.^ This connexion with western history, therefore, enables us to place the date of the Nirvana of Buddha between 482 and 477 b.c. Again, Asoka, the third king of the Maurya dynasty, in the 12th year of his reign, in an inscription, mentions the names of the Greek kings Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Antigonos of Macedon, Magas of Gyrene, and Alexander of Epirus,^ and as Antiochus only came to the throne in 261 B.C., and it must have been engraved some time subsequent to that event, possibly about 252 e.g."^ the first year of Asoka may have been 263 b.c. Chandragupta had ruled 24 years, and Bindusara, the father of
1 The ascertained chronology of the time and the references of classical writers ought to enable us to fix this date within very narrow limits. Wilford (Asiat. Res. vol. V. p. 279 fF., and ix. p. 87) placed the commencement of Chandragupta's reign in 315 B.C. Prinsep (I. A. Us. Tab. p. 240), Max Miiller {Hist. Sans. Lit. p. 298), and most other writers have agreed to this. Lassen (I. A. II. 64) seems to hesitate between the years 317 and 315, but finally decides for the latter (II. 67, 222, 1207). Cunning- ham (Bhilsa Topes, p. 90) arrives at 316 B.C. ; Dr. H. Kern {Over de Jaartelling, p. 27) assumes 322, Rhys Davids {Anc. Coins of Ceylon^ p. 41) B.C. 320.
There is no hint, however, that Chandragupta rose to power before the death of Porus, who by the partition at Triparadeisus, b.c. 321, was allowed to retain his kingdom, while Seleucus Nicator obtained the satrapy of Babylon. Between 320 and 316 '^ Seleucus was laying the foundation of his future greatness " (Justin, xv. 4), and in 317 Eudemus, who had put Porus to death (about 319), left the Panjab with a large army to assist Eumenes, affording an opportunity for the revolt of Chandragupta and apparently the occasion alluded to by Justin. Then the expeditions of Seleucus to Bactria and afterwards to India took place about 303-302 (Clinton, F. H. vol. iii., p. 482) ; the alliance with Chandragupta and the embassy of Megasthenes were at a later date (conf. Plutarch. Alex, 62), possibly after the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, when Seleucus was finally confirmed in his kingdom ; and as Megasthengs resided perhaps for several years at the court of Chandragupta (Arrian Exp. Alex. V. vi. and 2 ; Solinus Polyhistar., c. 60 ; Robertson's India, p. 30), we are forced \o allow that the latter was alive after b.c. 300, so that his reign must have begun after 323 ; possibly it was dated from the death of Porus between 320 and 317 B.C. : no earlier date seems reconcileable with our information. — J.B.
2 The accession and death of each of these kings are placed as follows ; —
Antiochus Theos - - - b c. 261 to 246
Ptolemy Philadelphus - - - 285 to 247
Antigonus Gonatas - . - 283 to 239
Magas - - - 301 to 258
Alexander II. of Epirus - - 272 to 254
3 If we assume that the arrangement alluded to by Asoka was made with all these kings at the same time, the latest date available would be B.C. 258, which would place Asoka's abhisheka iu B.C. 270, the death of Chandragupta in 302, and his accession in 326 B.C., while Alexander was still in India. But agreements of the kind
24 INTRODUCTION.
Asoka, 28 years ; but tlie latter was not inaugurated till the 4tli year after his father's death, or 218 years after the Nirvana. There is some doubt about the precise duration of his reign, depending on whether we are to reckon its commencement from his father's death (cir. 267 B.C.), or as is usual with the Hindus, from his abhisheha or inauguration four years later. Assuming the later to be the correct mode, the following table will give the early chronology of Buddhism to the death of Asoka — liable pos- sibly to some modifications to the extent possibly of some 4 or 5 years, for the determination of which we must await further discoveries ^ : —
B.C. 560 Gautama Buddha born at Kapilavastu.
531 „ became an ascetic.
526 „ assumed Buddhahood in his 35th year.
481 Buddha died, the era of the Nirvana and date of the first Buddhist Council.
381 The second Council held in the 10th year of the reign of Kalavarddhana .
were most probably made first with the nearer kings of Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene, and afterwards with the more remote rulers of Macedon and Epirus, while the embassy on its way back through Persia may have renewed the arrangements which Avere not finally reported in India till as late as 252 B.C.
1 The following list of contemporary events may enable the reader to realise the importance of the period between Buddha and Asoka, and to fix these dates in the memory : —
B.C. 560 Nerighssar king of Babylon.
548 Cyrus overthrew Croesus on the Halys.
530 Cambyses king of Persia.
480 Xerxes defeated at Salamis.
400 Socrates put to death.
321 Partition of the conquests of Alexander at Triparadeisus.
317 Eudemus left the Panjab with a large force to aid Eumenes.
316 Seleucus fled from Babylon to Egypt to escape from Antigonus.
312 „ returned to Babylon. Era of the Seleucidse, 1st Oct.
306 „ assumed the regal style, and pushed his conquests to the north
and east.
303 „ invades Bactria and India.
301 Battle of Ipsus ; Seleucus confirmed in the East.
283 Ptolemy Philadelphus succeeds to the throne of Egypt, and Antigonus Gonatus in Macedon.
280 Seleucus slain by Antiochus Soter, who sent Daimachus on an embassy to Amitrochates (Bindusara), son of Sandracottos.
256 Bactria revolted under Diodotus.
250 Arsaces founds the Parthian empire,
CHRONOLOGY. 25
B.C. 327 Alexander's invasion of India ; Philip made satrap.
326 Alexander left Pattala after tlie rains ; Philip murdered
by the mercenaries. 323 Death of Alexander. 321 Porus allowed to retain the Panjab ; Seleucus obtains
Babylon. 319 Chandragupta founds the Maurya dynasty. 295 Bindusara succeeds and rules 28 years. 267 Bindusara's death. 263 Asoka's abhisheka or coronation. 259 Asoka converted to Buddhism in his 4th year. 257 Mahendra, the son of Asoka, ordained a Buddhist priest
in Asoka's 6th year. 246 The third Buddhist Council held in his 17th year. 245 Mahendra sent to Ceylon in his 18th year. 233 Death of Asoka's queen, Asandhimitra. 227 Asoka became an ascetic in the 33rd year after his
conversion.-^ 225 Death of Asoka in the 38th year of his reign. After the death of Asoka, the Pauranik chronology of his suc- cessors stands thus : — B.C. 225 Suvasas. 215 ? Dasaratha. 200 ? Sangata, Bandupalita. 195 ? Indrapalita, Salisuka. 185 ? Somasarma. 183 ? Sasadharma. 180 Yrihadratha. The last of the Mauryas was overthrown by his general, Pushya- mitra, who established the Sunga dynasty, which probably lost hold of many of the southern provinces of the Maurya empire at an early date. The Pauranik chronology, however, stands thus, the dates being only approximate and liable to adjustment to the extent of from 10 to 15 years throughout : — B.C. 175 Pushyamitra. 160 Agnimitra. 134 Vasumitra.
1 If Asoka's whole reign extended to only 38 years, this and the preceding six dates should be altered to four years earlier.
26 INTRODUCTION.
A
B.C. 122 Badraka or Ardraka. 110 Pulindaka, 100 Ghoshavasu ? 90 Yajramitra ? 75 Devabhuti.
The next dynasty of the Puranas is the Kanvas, who are said to have ruled 45 years, say B.C. 70 to 25. These, again, are represented as followed by the Andhrabhrityas, who ruled only over the Dekhan. From the character of the inscriptions on the western caves and on their coins, however, it may be doubted whether they were so late as the Pauranik statements would place them, and it may yet turn out that they were contemporary, to some extent, with both the Sunga and Kanva dynasties. The Pauranik chronology enumerates about thirty kings from Sipraka or Sisuka to Pulomavi III., the dynasty extending over about 440 years ,^ but no great dependence can be placed in their accuracy.
There is in fact very little difficulty with regard to the chronology of the five centuries just enumerated. The great uncertainty prevails anterior to the advent of Buddha, and the great confusion began with the accession of the later Andra or Andrabhritya dynasty, about the beginning of the Christian era. For 10 centuries after that time there are very few epochs which can be fixed with absolute certainly and very few kings whose dates are beyond dispute. By means of inscriptions and a careful analysis of Chinese documents we are now beginning to see our way with tolerable certainty through this wilderness, but it still is indispensable to state the grounds on which each date is founded before it can be used to determine the age of any cave or building on which it is found. Even then the dates can only be taken as those most probable according to our present information, and subject to con- firmation or adjustment by subsequent discoveries. Still the sequence is no where doubtful, and the relative dates generally quite sufficient for the purposes of an architectural history of Mediaeval India.
^ See Second Aichceological Report, pp. 131 ff; see also p. 265 (Part II.) below for Pauranik list and dates.
architecture. 27
Architecture.
It is fortunate that in the midst of all these perplexities and uncertainties there is still one thread which, if firmly grasped, will lead us with safety through the labyrinth, and land us on firm ground, on which we may base our explorations in search of further knowledge. India is covered with buildings from north to south, and of all ages, from the first introduction of stone architecture in the third century B.C. down to the present day. With scarcely an exception, these are marked with strongly developed ethnographic peculiarities, which are easily read and cannot be mistaken. Many of these have inscriptions upon them, from which the relative dates, at least, can be ascertained, and their chronological sequence fol- lowed without hesitation. In addition to this, nearly all those before the Moslem conquest have sculptures or paintings, which give a most vivid picture of the forms of faith to which they were dedicated, and of the manners and customs, as well of the state of civilisation of the country at the time they were erected.
As mentioned above, the history of Buddhism as a state religion begins with the conversion of Asoka, in the third century B.c.,andas it'happens, he was the first to excavate a cave for religious pur- poses. He also was probably the author of the sculptures on the Buddha Graya rails,^ but whether this is certain or not, we have in the wondrous collection of sculptures found by Greneral Cunningham at Bharhut a complete picture of Buddhism, and of the arts and manners of the natives of India in the second century before Christ.^ The tale is then taken up with the gateways at Sanchi, belonging to the first century of our era, which are equally f uU and equally interesting.'^ To these follow the rails at Amravati * in the fourth century, showing a considerable technical advance, though accom- panied with a decline of that vigour which characterised the earlier
1 General Cunningham's Archceological Report, vol. i., Plates VIII. to XI., and Babu Rajendralala Mitra's Buddha Gaya, Plates XXXIV. to XXXVIII., and one photograph, Plate L. As none of these plates, which are lithographs, are satisfactory, it is to be hoped that the whole may some day be photographed, like the last. There is no monument in India more important for the history of Art than this railj which is probably the oldest example of Hindu sculpture we possess.
2 Description of the Stupa at Bharhut, by Gen. A. Cunningham, 4to., London, 1879.
3 Illustrated in the first 45 plates of Tree and Serpent Worship, 2nd Ed. 4to., London, 1873.
* Illustrated in the oo remaining plates of that work.
28 INTRODUCTION.
examples. From the fourtli century, to the decline of Buddhism in the seventh, there exist a superfluity of illustrations of its progress, in the sculptures and painting at Ajanta and in the western caves, while the monasteries of Gandhara, beyond the Indus in the north-west, supply a most interesting parallel series of illustrations. These last were executed under a singularly classical influence, whose origin has not yet been investigated, though it would be almost impossible to overrate its importance.^
We have thus either carved in stone or painted on plaster as complete a series of contemporary illustrations as could almost be desired of the rise, progress, and decline of Buddhism during the whole of the 1,000 years in which it existed as an important religion in India. We have also a continuation of the series illustrating the mode in which the present religious forms of India grew out of former faiths, and took the shapes in which they now exist in almost every part of India.
Were all these materials either collected together in museums or published in such a form as to be easily accessible to the public,^ we would possess a more vivid and more authentic picture, not only of the ethnography, but of the ever varying forms of Indian civili- sation, than is to be obtained from any books, or any other form of evidence now available.
The one defect in this mode of illustration is that it does not extend far enough back in time, to be all that is wanted. Neither in India, nor indeed anywhere else, were the Aryans a building race, nor did their cultivation of the fine arts ever reach that point at which it sufficed for historical illustration. They chose and throughout adhered, to the phonetic mode of expression, as both higher and more intellectual, and in this they were no doubt right in so far as all the higher forms of human intellectual expression are concerned. But books perish, and may be changed and altered,
1 Neither the Ajanta frescoes nor the Gandhara sculptures have yet been published. The latter exist in the museums of Lahore, South Kensington, and Gen. Cunningham's possession. Photographs of nearly all the known specimens are in my possession. — J. F.
2 This could easily and speedily be done, as almost all these antiquities are public property, and nine-tenths of them have been photographed, and the negatives exist, generally in the hands of the Government. The only obstacle is the apathy and indifference of the public, and of those who might be expected to take most interest in the matter.
ARCHITECTURE. 29
and after all do not present so vivid and so permanent an illus- tration of contemporary feelings as those which may be expressed by buildings in stone, or by forms, in carving or in colour.
Be this as it may, it is in consequence of this peculiarity of the Aryan mind, that the history of art in India begins with the upheaval of the Turanian element, and the introduction of Buddhism as a state religion under Asoka in the middle of ^the third century B.C., and it is consequently with that king's reign that our illustrations drawn from Indian architecture practically begin.
When this fact was first announced, now some forty years ago, the evidence on which it rested was to some extent negative. No building had then been found which could pretend to an earlier date, nor has any one been discovered since ; but till we can feel sure that we know all the buildings in India, there is no absolute cer- tainty that some earlier example may not be brought to light. At present, however,' with the solitary exception of Jarasandha-ka- Baithak, to be described presently, no building is known to exist nor any cave, possessing any architectural character, whose date can be ex- tended back to the time when Alexander the G-reat visited India. It may, of course, be disputed whether or not it was, in consequence of hints received from the G-reeks that the Indians first adopted stone for architectural purposes ; but the coincidence is certain, and in the present state of our knowledge may be looked upon as an established fact. At the same time though it is almost equally certain that stone was used in India as a building material for engineering pur- poses and for foundations, yet it is quite certain that nothing that can properly be called architecture is to be found there till considerably after Alexander's time.^ ^
Besides the negative evidence above alluded to, we now have direct evidence of the fact in a form that hardly admits of dispute. "We
1 Even in Alexander's time, accodring to Megasthenes (Strabo p. 702), the walls of the capital city, Palibothra, were constructed in wood only, tv'kivav irept^oKov l%ovo-av. A portion of the fortifications of minor cities were probably of the same convenient though combustible material. Notwithstanding this, Babii Rajendralala Mitra in his work on Buddha Gat/a, p. 167, and 168, asserts that the walls of this city were of Inick, and as his authority for this, quotes the passage from Megasthenes above referred to. Besides being in brick, he adds (p. 168), apparently on his own authority, that they were 30 feet in height. In so far as the testimony of a trustworthy eye witness is concerned, this statement of Megasthenes is entirely at variance with the Babu's contention, for the use of stone generally, for architectural purposes in India before Alexander's time ; and Protanto confinns the statements made above in the text.
30
INTRODUCTION.
have caves like tliis one at Bhaja, which was excavated certainly after Asoka's time, in which not only every decorative feature is directly copied from a wooden original, but the whole of the front,
No. 1. Front of the Cave at Bhaja, from a Photograph.
the ribs of the roof, and all the diflBcult parts of the construction were originally in wood, and a good deal of the original woodwork remains in the cave at the present hour. But more than this, as will be observed in the woodcut, the posts dividing the nave from the aisles all slope inwards. In a wooden building having a circular roof, the timber work of which was from its form liable to spread, it was intelligible that the posts that supported it, should be placed sloping inwards, so as to counteract the thrust. No people, however, who had ever built or seen a stone pillar, would have adopted such a solecism in the rock when copying the wooden halls in which their assemblies had been held and their worship had ju'eviously been performed. In order to follow the lines of these sloping pillars, the jambs of the doorways were made to slope inwards also, and there is no better
ARCHITECTURE. 31
test of age than the extent to which the system is carried. By degrees the pillars and the jambs become more and more upright, the woodwork disappeared as an ornament, and was replaced by forms more and more lithic, till long before the last caves were excavated we can barely recognise, and may almost forget, the wooden forms from which they took their origin.
Though therefore it is more than probable that the Indians borrowed the idea of using stone for architectural purposes from the Greeks, or to speak more correctly, from western foreigners bearing the Greek appellation of Yavanas, it is equally certain that they did not adopt any of the forms of Greek architecture or any details from the same source. It is indeed one of the principal points of interest in this style, that we see its origin in the wood, and can trace its development into stone, without any foreign admix- ture. It is one of the most original and independent styles in the whole world, and consequently one of the most instructive for the philosophic study of the rise and progress of architectural forms.
While asserting thus broadl}'- that stone architecture commenced in India only 250 years before Christ, there are two points that should not be overlooked, not that they are likely to disturb the facts, but they may modify the inferences to be drawn from them. The first of these is the curious curvilinear form of the Sikharas or spires of Hindu temples, which_ cannot at present, at least, be traced back to any wooden original. It is true the earliest example whose date can be fijxed with anything like certainty is the great temple at Bhuvaneswar,'^ which was erected in the 7th century of our era. It is however then complete in all essentials, and though we can follow its gradual attenuation down to the present day, when it becomes almost as tall, in proportion, as a gothic spire, we cannot advance one step backwards towards its origin. My impression is, that it was originally invented in the plains of Bengal, where stone is very rare indeed, and that the form was adopted to suit a brick and terra-cotta construction for which it is perfectly adapted.^ But it may also be derived from some lithic form of which we have now no knowledge, but be this as it may, the uncertainty that prevails regarding the origin of this form prevents us from saying absolutely that there were no original forms of stone architecture in India anterior to the time of
^ History of Indian Architecture, page 422, Woodcut 233. 2 jiid,^ page 223, Woodcut 124.
32 INTRODUCTION.
the G-reeks. Whether, however, it was derived from wood or brick or stone, it may be the elaboration of some Dasyu form of temple of which we have now no trace, and regarding which it is con- sequently idle to speculate. But till we can more nearly bridge over the 7 or 8 centuries that elapsed between the first Buddhist caves and the earliest known examples of Hindu architecture, we cannot tell what may have happened in the interval. For our present purposes it is sufficient to say that if there is no evidence that the temples of the Hindus were derived from a wooden original, there is as little that would lead us to suspect that the form arose from any necessity of stone construction.^
Even, however, though it may be proved to demonstration that stone was not employed for architectural purposes before the age of Asoka, we must still guard ourselves from the assumption that it was either from want of knowledge or of skill that this was so. They seem deliberately to have preferred wood, and in every case where great durability was not aimed at, and where fire was not to be dreaded, they no doubt were right. Larger spaces could far more easily be roofed over with wood than with stone, and carvings and decoration more easily and effectually applied. They think so in Burmah to the present day, and had they not thought so in India in the third century B.C., it is clear, from what they did at Bharhut and Buddha Graya, that they could as easily have employed stone then, as they do now. At Bharhut, for instance, the precision with
1 In a recent number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xlvii., Part L, for 1878, Mr. Growse, of the B.C.S., expresses astonishment that I should perceive any difficulty in understanding whence the form of these temples was derived. There are at Mathura several abnormal Hindu temples erected during the reign of the tolerant Akbar, the sikharas of which are octagonal in plan, and with curved vertical out- lines, from which Mr. Growse concludes that the form of the Hindu sikharas unquestion- ably originates in the Buddhist Stupas. I have long been personally perfectly familiar with these Mathura temples, and knowing when they were erected, always considered them as attempts on the part of the Hindus of Akbar's day to assimilate their outlines to those of the domes of their Moslem masters which were the most charactirestic and most beautiful features of their architecture. If these outlines had been derived from stupas, the earliest would have been those that resemble these Buddhist forms most, but the direct con- trary is the fact. The earliest, like those at Bhuvaneswai" are the squarest in plan and the most unlike Buddhist forms that exist, and it is strange that the similarity should only be most developed, in the most modern, under Akbar. The subject I confess appears to me as mysterious as it was before I became acquainted with Mr. Growse's lucubrations. — J.F.
ARCHITECTURE.
33
which architectural decorations are carved in stone 150 years b.c. has hardly been surpassed in India at any time, and whatever we may think of the drawing of the figure sculptures, there can be no hesita- tion as to the mechanical skill with which they are executed. The same is true of what we find at Buddha Gaya, and of the gateways at Sanchi. Though the forms are all essentially borrowed from wooden constructions, the execution shows a proficiency in cutting and carving stone materials that could only be derived from long experience.
As hinted above, the only stone building yet found in India that has any pretension to be dated before Asoka's reign is one having the popular name of Jarasandha-ka-Baithak,^ at Rajgir. It is partially described by General Cunningham in the third volume of his ArcJice- ological Bejwrts, but not with such detail, as he no doubt would have bestowed upon it, had he been aware of its importance. As will be seen from the annexed woodcut, it is a tower about 85 feet square at base and sloping upwards for 20 or 28 feet- to a platform mea- suring 74 feet by 78. It is built wholly of unhewn stones, neatly fitted together without mortar ; and its most remarkable peculiarity is that it contains 15 cells, one of which is shown in the woodcut. They are from 6 to 7 feet in length, with about half that in breadth. Their position in height is not clearly marked in Gene- ral Cunningham's drawing, but Mr. Broadley describes them as on the level of the ground, and adds that they are inhabited up to this day, at times, by Nagas or Sad- hus, Jogis whose bodies are constantly smeared with
|
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No. 2. View and Tlan of Jarasandha-ka-Baithak, from Cunuiugham.
1 There is another erection beainng the same name at Giryek, about 7 or 8 miles eastward of Rajgir; that however is a brick stupa of comparatively modern date, and probably as General Cunningham suggests, the Hansa Stupa or goose tower, and derives its name from a very famous Buddhist Jataka which he quotes. Reports, vol. i. p. IH,
Plate XV.
2 Broadley in Indian Antiquary, vol. i. p. 72.
Y 132. C
34 INTRODUCTION.
ashes.^ Immediately behind this Baithak Greneral Cunningham dis- covered a cave, which he unhesitatingly identifies the Pipala Cave, where, according to Fahian, Buddha was accustomed to sit in deep meditation after his mid-day meal.- It is a rude cavern some 25 by 28 feet, the roof of which has partially fallen in. It seems, at one time to have been partially lined with brick, but is otherwise quite rude and unornamented. The General considers it undoubtedly the quarry hole from which the stones were taken to build the Baithak, and either it, or the tower in Hiuen Thsang's time bore the name of the palace of the Asuras.^
The interest of this group, for our present purposes, rests princi- pally on the three following considerations : —
First, we have a cave with which Buddha's name seems insepa- rably connected. It is rude and unhewn, like all those which, so far as we at present know, are assigned to his age.
Secondly, we have the earliest vihara or monastery yet found in India, built of unhewn stones, and wholly unornamented from an architectural point of view. Originally it may have been three storeys in height, and with steps leading to each, but these are gone and probably cannot now be recovered.^
Thirdly, though this at present may be considered as purely speculative, the arrangements of the Baithak point almost undoubt- edly to Assyria as the country from which its forms were derived, and the Birs Nimrud,^ with its range of little cells on two sides, seems only a gigantic model of what is here copied on a small and rude scale. Without attempting to lay too much stress on the name Asura,^ the recent discovery by Greneral Cunningham of a pro- cession headed by a winged human-headed bull," points beyond all
1 Broadley in Indian Antiquary, vol, i. p. 72.
2 Beal's Fahian, clxxx. p. 117.
3 Julien's Hiuen Thsang, iii. p. 24.
^ In Bengal at the present day in remote villages, the inhabitants construct three- storeyed pyramids in mud, when they have no permanent temples, and generally plant a Tulsi plant on the top. These temples are of course Vaishnava.
o History of Architecture, vol. i., woodcuts 47 and 48, p. 153.
6 I have always been of the opinion of Buchanan Hamilton (Behar, p. 21), that the term Asura really meant Assyi-ian ; but these nominal similarities are generally so treacherous that I have never dared to say so. Recent i-esearches, however, seem to confirm to a very great extent the influence Assyria had in Magadha anterior to the advent of Buddha.
7 Cunningham, Reports, vol. iii. p. 99, Plate XXVIII,
ARCHITECTURE. 35
doubt to an Assj-rian origin, and fifty other things tend in the same direction with more or less distinctness. This is not the place, however, to insist upon them, as they have very little direct bearing on the subject of this work. It is well, however, to indicate their existence, as Assyrian architecture, in the form in which it is found copied in stone at Persepolis, is the only style to which we can look for any suggestions to explain the origin of many forms and details found in the western caves, as well as in the Gandhara monasteries.
When the various points hinted at above are fairly grasped, they add immensely to the interest of the caves to be described in the following pages. More than this, however, as the Buddhists were beyond doubt the earliest cave excavators in India, and the only ones for more than a thousand years after the death of the founder of that religion, these rock-cut temples form the only connecting link between the Nirvana and the earliest Buddhist scriptures which have reached our times, in their present form.^ Whether looked on from an ethnological, a historical, or a religious point of view, the Buddhist caves, with their contemporary sculpture and paintings, became not only the most vivid and authentic, but almost the only authentic record of the same age, of that form of faith from its origin to its decline and decay in India. If it is also true — which we have at present no reason for doubting — that the Buddhists were the first to use any permanent materials for building and sculptural purposes in the caves, combined with the few fragments of structural buildings that remain, they have left a record which is quite unique in India. It is, however, a representation which for vividness and completeness can hardly be surpassed by any lithic record in any other country, of their feelings and aspirations during the whole period of their existence.
Although the Brahmanical and Jaina caves, which succeeded the Buddhist, on the decline of that religion in the sixth and subsequent centuries, are full of interest, and sometimes rival and even surpass them in magnificence, they have neither their originality nor their truthfulness. They are either inappropriate imitations of the caves of the Buddhists, or copies of their own structural temples, whose
1 The Mahawanso and other Ceylonese scriptures were reduced to the present form by Buddhaghosa in the beginning of the oth century a.d. It was then, too, that Fa Hian, the earliest Chinese pilgrim, travelled in India.
c 2
36 INTRODUCTION.
details were derived from some wooden or brick original, and whose forms were designed for some wholly different application, without the least reference to their being executed as monoliths in the side of a hill. Notwithstanding these defects, however, there is an expression of grandeur, and of quasi eternity, in a temple cut in the rock, which is far greater than can be produced by any structural building of the same dimensions, while the amount of labour evidently required for their elaboration is also an element of greatness that never fails to affect the mind of the spectator. Taken by themselves it may be true that the later series of caves, notwithstanding their splendour, are hardly equal in interest to the earlier ones, not- withstanding their simplicity. It is, however, when looked at as a whole, that the true value of the complete series of rock-cut temples in India becomes apparent. From the rude Pippala cave at Rajgir in which Buddha sat to meditate after his mid-day meal, to the latest Jaina caves in the rock at Grwalior, they form a continuous chain of illustration, extending over more than 2,000 years, such as can hardly in its class be rivalled any where or by any other nation. It is too, infinitely more valuable in India than it would be in an}^ country possessing a literature in which her religious forms and feelings and her political history had been faithfully recorded, in other forms of expression. As in India, however, the written record is so imperfect, and so little to be relied upon, it is to her Arts, and to them only, that we can turn to realise what her position and aspirations were at an earlier age ; but this being so, it is fortunate they enable us to do this in a manner at once so complete and so satisfactory.
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37
EASTEKN CAVES.
CHAPTER I.
BARABAR GROUP.
Although this work is principally intended to illustrate the splendid series of caves in "Western India, there are four or five groups in the Bengal and Madras presidencies a knowledge of which, if not indispensable, is at least extremely useful to enable us to un- derstand the history of the cave architecture on the Bombay side of India, It is true that with the exception of the Mahavallipur group they cannot pretend to rival the western caves either in splendour or extent, but the Katak caves present features of great beauty and are interesting from their originality. The greatest historical interest, however, centres in the Behar series, which, though small, are impor- tant for our purposes, having all been excavated during the existence of the Great Mauryan dynasty, and being, therefore, the earliest caves, so far as we at present know, excavated for religious purposes in any part of India.
The Barabar caves are situated in an isolated range of granite hills on the left bank of the Phalgu river about 16 miles due north from the town of Gaya. They are seven in number, and though differing in plan, are all similar in character and evidently belong to same age. Their dimensions are inconsiderable. The largest, called the Nagarjuni cave, is a plain hall with circular ends measuring 46 feet by 19 feet 5 inches, and though two others, the Sudama and Lomas Rishi, are nearly as large, they are divided into two apartments, and consequently have not the same free area.^
Fortunately there is no difficulty whatever with regard to the date of these caves ; six out of the seven have inscriptions upon them, all
1 Plans of all the caves are given by General Cunningham in vol. i. of his Reports, Plate XIX., and also by Kittoe, J.A.S.B., for May 1847, Plate VIII. There is no essential difference between these two sets of plans of these caves. The inscriptions were all copied by General Cunningham, and engraved, in facsimile, on Plate XX. of the same work, with translations, pp. 47, et seq.
38 EASTERN CAVES.
in the oldest form of the Pali alphabet, identical with that found on Asoka's lats. More than this, the inscription on the Sudama cave states that it was excavated in the 12th year of that monarch or B.C. 252, and is therefore the earliest here. The latest is the Gropi or Milkmaid cave, in the Nagarjuni hill, which is dated in the reign of Dasaratha, the grandson of Asoka, in or about B.C. 214. The whole group is therefore comprehended within about 40 years, and was com- menced apparently within 80 years after Alexander's visit to India.^ The only cave in this group that has no ancient inscription upon it is the Lomas Rishi, but it is not difficult to see why this was the case. It is the only one which has any architectural magnificence ex- ternally, and was consequently selected by two kings, Sardula Varma and Ananta Yarma, sons and grandsons apparently of Yajiia Sri of the Andra dynasty in the third or fourth century of our era, to adorn it with their inscriptions and to announce its conversion to the purposes of the Brahmanical faith.' Before doing this they no doubt carefully obliterated the more ancient inscription, which at that time was in all probability perfectly legible and easily understood. Whether this is, or is not the true explanation of the absence of an inscription in the lat characters in this cave, is of ver}^ little import- ance. It is so absolutely identical both in dimensions and disposition with the Sudama cave, which we know was excavated in the 12th year of Asoka, that there can be no doubt as to its age. Its archi- tecture alone, if it may be so called, would be suflBcient to settle this point. As may be seen from the annexed woodcut it is as essentially wooden as any other cave fa§ade in India. Whether it is more so than the cave at Bhaja quoted above (woodcut No. I), is difficult to determine on its merits alone. If we had any Ghaitya caves in
1 When Hiuen Thsang Avas journeying from Patna to Gaya, in 637 a.d., he visited these caves, as I pointed out in 1 872, in my paper on his travels in the Journal of the R. A. S., vol. vi., new series, p. 221, ct scq. He, however, found them nearly deserted, only a few monks {quelqms douzaines) remained, who acted as guides to show him the localities. . . . When I wrote that paper I was obliged to rely on the account in the life of the pilgrim, by Hoei li. JuUen's translation of the .Si-yuki, ou which General Cunningham principally relied, having a misprint of " 200 jjcis " instead of " 200 ii " for the pilgrim's first journey from Patna. The Rev. Mr. Beal, who is translatino- the work, assures me this is so, and that I consequently was quite justified in rejecting \\\B General's conjecture, and insisting on the fact that the pilgiim did visit these caves. Julien's Translation of the Si-yu-ki, vol. i., p. 139 ; vol. ii., p. 439, et seq.
2 These inscriptions were first translated by Wilkins in the 1st vol. Asiatic Researches afterwards by Prinsep, J. A. S. B., vol. vi, p 671, et seq.
BARABAR GROUP.
89
Ko. 3. Facade of the Lomas Rislii Cave, from a Photograph.
Behar whicli admitted of direct comparison it might be possible to do so, but when these eastern caves were excavated, the bold expedient had not occurred to any one of sinking a cave at right angles to the face of the rock, deep into its bowels, and^leaving one end entirely open for the admission of light. ^All the Behar caves have their axis parallel to the face of the rock, and their entrances are placed consequently on one side, so as to act as windows to light their interiors as well as for entrances. Another peculiarity of the eastern caves is that no real woodwork was used in their decoration, while all the early Chaitya caves in the west, were adorned with wooden ribs internally, whose remains are to be seen at this day, and their fagades were, as at Bhaja, entirely constructed in teak wood. It may be that the roofs of the buildings copied in the caves at Behar were framed in bambu, without wooden ribs, like the huts of the present day, and consequently they could neither be easily repeated nor imi- tated in the rock. But be this as it may, these diflferences are such that no direct comparison between the styles adopted in the two sides of India, could be expected to yield any very satisfactory results. It is consequently fortunate that in Asoka's time, as we know from the example at Bharhut, it was the fashion to inscribe everything. At Bharhut there is hardly a single person, nor a Jataka, or historical scene, which has not a name or a description attached to it, and this seems also to have been the case with these caves. Before the time
40 EASTERN CAVES.
when the gateways at Sanchi were erected, in the first century of our era, this good custom seems to have died out. All the rails there are inscribed with the names of their donors, but they are earlier than the gateways. They too, however, have also the names of their donors engraved on them, but unfortunately nothing to help us to discri- minate what the subjects are which are represented in the sculptures.
One characteristic which is constant both in the early caves in the eastern and western sides of India is that all the doorways have jambs sloping inwards. This could only have arisen from one of two circumstances : either it was, as at MycenaD and in all the early Grecian buildings in pre-Hellenic times, for the sake of shortening the bearing on the lintel. The Pelasgi had no knowledge of the principle of the radiating arch, and used only small stones in their architecture generally. It consequently, though awkward, was a justifiable expedient. In India it arose, as already pointed out, from a totally different cause. It was because the earliest cave diggers were copying wooden buildings, in which the main posts were placed sloping inwards, in order to counteract the outward thrust of their semicircular roofs. Though tolerable, however, while following the main lines of the building, the sloping jambs of the doorways were early felt to be inappropriate to stone constructions, and the prac- tice in India died out entirely before the Christian era.'
Although so differently arranged that it is difficult to institute
^ General Cunningham and bis assistants, Kke too many others, call these doorways " Egyptian," though such forms are not known in that style of architecture except in the cockney example in Piccadilly. The truth is, even as early as the times of the Pyramids (B.C. 3700) the Egyptians had learned to quarry blocks of any required dimensions, and had no temptation to adopt this weak and unconstructive form of opening, and as they never, so far as we know, used wootleu architecture, they must always have felt its incongruity. If we expect to find such forms in Egypt we must go back some thousands of years before the time of the Pyramids, and I doubt much if sloping jambs could have existed in that counti-y even then.
In Greece, on the contrary, wherever the Pelasgic or Ionian race remained, they retained these sloping jambs from that curious veneration for ancient forms which per- vades all architectural history, and leads to the retention of the many awkward contri- vances when once the eye is accustomed to them. The sloping jamb, it need hardly be paid, is never found associated with the Doric order, but was retained with the Ionic as late as the age of Pericles in the Erechtheum at Athens. See History of Architecture, vol. i. pp. 234 to 240, and 286, et seq.
In niches, and as a merely decorative form, the sloping jambs were retained in the monasteries of Gandhara to the west of the Indus, till long after the Christian era but never, so far as I know, in constructive openings.
BARABAR GROUP.
41
any direct comparison between them and the western Chaitya or Church caves, it seems almost certain that none of the Barabar caves were meant as residences, but were intended for sacred or ceremonial purposes. The one most like a Yihara, or residence, is the Nagarjuni cave, called " the Milkmaid's cave," but even there a great hall 46 feet long, with rounded ends, and only one small door in the centre of one side, seems too large for the residence of one hermit, and it has none of those divisions into cells which are universally found in all western Viharas.^ At the same time it must be confessed that our knowledge of Buddhist ceremonial in the age of Asoka does not enable us to say what kind of service would be appropriate to such a hall. It may, however, have been a Dharmasala or hall of assembly for the congregation ; a form of building which was probably usual with the Buddhists in all ages of their supremacy.
The case is somewhat different with the Kama Chopar cave, a rect- angular hall measuring 83 feet by 14, which was excavated in the 19th year of Asoka. But here a vedi or stone altar at one end clearly indicates a sacred purpose. On the other hand, there can be no doubt but that the Sudama and Lomas Rishi caves, which are so nearly identical in form, were real Chaityas. Instead, however, of the circular dagobas, which in all instances occupy the centre of the apsidal inner termination of the western caves, its place is here taken by a circular chamber evidently meaning the same thing. It is difficult for us now to decide at the present day whether it was inexperience which prevented the early cave diggers from No. 6. Sudama Cave, seeing their way to leave a free standing dagoba in their halls, or
No. 4. Lomas Kishi Cave. Scale 50 feet to 1 inch.
1 The only erections I know of, at all like this cave in plan, are the residences of the Naga chiefs, in the hills south of the Asam valley. Two of these are represented in Plate II. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xli. for 1872, which witli these rounded ends seem to resemble this so-called Milkmaid's cave in many respects. The mode in which the ridge poles are thrust through the roof occurs frequently in the sculptures at Bharhut and elsewhere.
2 At Kondiwte in the Isle of Salsette there is a very old cave, very similar to those at Barabar, except that it is sunk perpendicularly into the hill side. It has a circular
42 EASTERN CAVES.
whether it was that in structural buildings of that age a wooden or metal dagoba or relic shrine stood in a circular chapel, and they copied that.- But be that as it may, there seems no doubt that the circular chambers in these two caves, were the sanctuaries which contained the object to be worshipped, whatever that was, and constituted their claim to rank as chapels, not residences.
The remaining two are so small and insignificant as hardly to deserve notice, but one, the Vapiya or Well Cave, seems to have got its name from a sacred well close by. It is a square cell with an antechamber, and is attached to another, called the Yadathi, which is the last of the series. Greneral Cunningham seems to think there was a Stupa, or some sacred edifice, erected in brick or stone above these two caves, and that they formed only, as it were, its lower storey.^ This on the whole seems so probable that it may be adopted without hesitation, though it will only be by careful exam- ination on the spot that it can be determined with certainty.
Though the caves of this group are among the smallest and the least ornamented of any to be found in India, it still must have required a strong religious impulse to induce men to excavate even caves 30 and 40 feet in length in the hard granite rock, and to polish their interiors to the extent that some of these are finished, and all probably were intended to have been. Both internally and externally, however, they are so plain that but for their inscriptions we should hardly know to what age to assign them, were it not for the fortunate circumstance that a fa9ade was added to the Lomas Rishi Cave. When it, however, is compared with the caves at Bhaja, (woodcut No. 1), or with any of the pre-Christian caves of the western side of India, it is found to possess all the more marked peculiarities of their architecture. It has, as all the earlier caves have, the two great posts sloping inwards, and supporting in mortices, on their heads, the two great longitudinal ribs of the roof. It has, too, the
chamber at its inner end, like that in the Lomas Rishi cave, but in
it stands a stone rock-cut dagoba, certainly of the same age as the
cave itself. This makes it extremely probable that the Barabar
chambers were occupied by dagobas in wood or metal, but no
S 1 "0 feet to other similar chamber is known to exist in the West. The
1 inch. circular chamber evidently is unmeaning, and its use was
No. 6. Kondiwte Cave, abandoned as soon as it was seen how much better the ea^e was
without it.
^ Reports, vol. i. p. 49.
Salsettc.
BARABAR GROUP. 43
open framework of wood between them, which was equally universal, and the rafters and little fashion pieces which kept the lower parts of the roof in its place. In fact we have here in stone every feature of those wooden fa9ades which the earlier excavators of caves copied so literally in the rock. It is unfortunately, however, only in stone, and we cannot even now feel quite certain how the roof was covered, when erected as a building standing free. It looks as if formed of two thicknesses of wooden planks, one bent, and the other laid longitudinally, and with a covering of metal ; it could hardly have been thatch, the thickness is scarcely sufficient, and when men were copying construction so literally, it would have been easy to have made the outer covering 9 inches or a foot in thickness instead of only the same as the other two coverings.^ Be this as it may, the age of the fagade is not doubtful, and so far as we at present know it is the earliest architectural composition that exists in any part of India, and one of the most instructive, from the literal manner in which it its wooden prototypes are copied in the rock.=^
1 The whole thickness of the roof so far as I can make out from the photographs is only 9 or 10 inches.
^ The buildings now existing in India, that seem most like these primitive caves in elevation, are the huts or houses erected by the Todas on the Nilagiri hills. They are formed of bambu neatly bound together with rattans. Their section is nearly the same as that of the caves, and they are covered externally with a very delicate thatch. For an account of them see A71 Account of the primitive Tribes and Monunients of the Nilagiris, by J. W. Breeks, M.C.S., published by Allen & Co. for the India Office in 1873, Plates VIII. and IX.
44
CHAPTER II. RAJGIR. Rajagriha, or Rajgir as it is now popularly called, was the capital of Magadha or central India during the whole period of Buddha's ministrations in India. It was the residence of Bimbasara, during whose reign he attained Buddhahood, and of Ajatasatru, in the 8th year of whose reign he entered into l^irvana, B.C. 481, according to the recently adopted chronology {ante, p. 24, 25). It is quite true that he resided during the greater part of the 53 years to which his mission extended at Benares, Sravasti, or Yaisaka (Lucknow^), but still he frequently returned to the capital, and the most important transac- tions of his life were all more or less connected with the kings who then reigned there. Under these circumstances it is hardly to be wondered at that Rajgir was considered almost as sacred in the eyes of his followers, as Jerusalem became to the Christians, and that such pilgrims as Fa Hian and Hiuen Thsang, naturally turned their steps almost instinctively to its site, and explored its ruins with the most reverent care. Long before their time, however, the old city had been deserted. It never could have been a healthy or com- modious city, being surrounded on all sides by hills, which must have circumscribed its dimensions and impeded the free circu- lation of air to an inconvenient extent. It consequently had been superseded long before their time, in the fifth and seventh century, by a new city bearing the same name but of much smaller size just outside the valley, to the northward. This, however, could never have been more than a provincial capital. The seat of empire during Asoka's reign having been transferred to Palibothra (Patna) on the Ganges, which we know from the
1 1 state this deliberately, notwithstanding what is said by General Cunningham in the Ancient Geography of India, p. 401, et scq., though this is not the place to attempt to prove it. Hiuen Thsang, however, places Vaisaka 500 li or 83 miles S.W. from Sravasti which can only apply to Luck now, and Fa Hian's Sa-chi, measured from Canouge or Sravasti, equally points to Lucknow as the city where the " tooth-brush tree" grew. Neither of the pilgrims ever approached Ayodhya (Fyzabad), which had been deserted long before Buddha's time. If the mounds that exist in the city of Lucknow were as carefully examined, they would probably yield more treasures than even those of Mathura. — J.F.
RAJQIK. 45
accounts of Megasthenes was an important city in the days of his grandfather Chandragupta. At the same time, any ecclesiastical establishments that might have been attracted by the sanctity of the place, must have been transferred to Nalanda, between 6 and 7 miles due north from the new city, where there arose the most important monastic establishment connected with Buddhism that, so far as we know, ever existed in India.^ Fortunately for us Hiuen Thsang has left us a glowing description of the splendour of its buildings, and of the piety and learning of the monks that resided in them. With this, however, we probably must remain content, inasmuch as some excavations recently undertaken on the spot have gone far to prove that all the remains now existing belong to buildings erected during the supremacy of the Pala dynasty of Bengal (765 to 1200 a.d.). The probability is that all the viharas described by Hiuen Thsang were erected wholly in wood, which indeed we might infer from his description, and that the monastery was burnt, or at least destroyed, in the troubles that followed the death of Siladitya in 650 a.d.,- and they consequently can have no bearing on the subject we are now discussing.
Under the circumstances above detailed leading to the early deser- tion of Rajgir, it would of course be idle to look now for any extensive remains of the buildings, if it ever had any, in stone or any permanent material, and equally so to expect any extensive rock-cut Yiharas or Chaitya caves in the immediate vicinity of such an establishment as that at Nalanda. Practically we are reduced for structural buildings to the Jarasandha-ka-Baithak, above described (woodcut No. 2), and for rock-cut examples to one cave, or rather pair of caves, known as the Son Bhandar or Grolden Treasury.
The larger of these two caves is very similar in plan to the Kama Chopar cave at Barabur and nearly of the same dimensions, being 34 feet by 17 feet.'^ Its walls are perfectly plain to the height of 6 feet 9inches, and thence rise to 11 feet 6 inches in the centre of a slightly pointed arch. The doorway is towards one end and has the usual sloping jambs of the period, the proportion between the lintel and sill being apparently as 5 to 6, which seems to be somewhat less
1 See History of Indian Architecture, vol. i., p. 136.
2 Hiuen Thsang, vol. i., p. 151. ; Ma-twan-lin, J. A. S. B.,yo\. vi., p. 69. ^ Cunningham, Reports, vol. v., Plate XIX.
46
EASTERN CAVES.
No. 7. Plan Son Bhandar Caves. No. 8. Section Son Bhandar Caves.
Scale 50 feet to 1 inch. Scale 25 feet to 1 inch.
From Onnningham's Report, vol. iii.
than the proportion at Barabar.^ This doorway is balanced towards the other end of the cave by a window nearly 3 feet square, which is
Xo. 9. Front of Son Bandhar C;ive, from a Photograph.
a decided innovation, and the first of its class known to exist in India. A still greater advance in cave architecture is the existence of a verandah 8 feet deep, extending along the front, and at one end some way beyond the cave. It existence is quite certain from the mortice holes still remaining in the rock into which the ends of the rafters were inserted, as shown in the woodcut. Its having been added here is specially interesting, as it certainly is, like the window, an improvement, and almost as certainly an advance on the design of the Barabar caves, and as clearly anterior to that of the Katak caves, where the verandahs are, as a rule, cut in the rock, with massive pillars in stone forming part of the original design.
As will be explained in the subsequent pages of the work, nearly
1 The greater part of the information concerning this cave is taken from General Cunningham's Reports, vol. iii. p. 140, Plate XLIII., but his drawings are on too small a scale and too rough to show all that is wanted. Kittoe also drew and described it, J. A. S. B.y September 1847. It is also described hj Broadley, Indian Antiquary vol. i., p. 74,
RAJGIR.
47
all the ornamentation of the Chaitya caves in the West down to the Christian era was either a literal copy of wooden construction, or was executed in wood itself, generally teak, attached to the rock and in very many instances, as at Bhaja, Bedsa, Karle, and elsewhere, the actual woodwork still remains where it was fixed some 2,000 years ago. From the representations of buildings at Buddha Gaya and at Bharhut and from the front of the Lomas Rishi cave quoted
Xo. 10. Representation of a Hall, from Cunningham's Stupa at Bharhut.
above (woodcut No. 3) we know that precisely the same mode of decoration was employed in the eastern caves, that was usual in the western ones, but in none of the Behar caves have we any evidence of wood being so employed except in the verandah of this cave and in one or two doubtful instances at Katak. One example may not be considered as sufficient to prove a case, but as far as it goes, this seems to be a first attempt to remedy a defect that must have become apparent as soon as the Barabar caves were completed. With very rare exceptions all the caves on both sides of India have verandahs, which were nearly indispensable, to protect the openings into the interior from the sun, but in nearly all subsequent excava-
48 EASTERN CAVES.
tions these were formed in stone, and became the most ornamental parts of the structure.
The other Son Bhandar cave is situated at a distance of 30 feet from the larger one and in all respects similar except that its dimen- sions are only 22 feet by 17. The roof has almost entirely fallen in, and only one mortice hole exists to show that it had a wooden verandah similar to that in front of the other cave.
Between these two caves a mass of rock is left standing in order to admit of a flight of steps being cut in it, leading to the surface of the rock above the roof of these two caves. Whether this led to an upper storey either in woodwork or brick, or whether there was not a dagoba or shrine on the upper platform, can only be ascertained when some one visits the spot after having his attention specially directed to this object, from its analogy with what is found in other places. From the arrangements of some of the Katak caves, I would rather expect to find the remains of an upper storey. But it may be very difficult to determine this, for whether it was a stiipa or dwel- ling, if in brick, it may have been utilised long ago. As before mentioned, General Cunningham seems to think that a vihara in brick, but with granite pillars, existed in a corresponding situation above the Yapiya and Vadathi caves at Barabar.^ If he is right in this, which seems very probable, it would go far to establish the hypothesis of the existence of a second storey over the Son Bhandar cave.
There seems to be nothing except its architecture by which the age of this cave can be determined. Kittoe, indeed, says " there are some rude outlines of Buddhas carved upon it," and there is also a handsome miniature Jain temple much mutilated,'^ which he gives a drawing of. The Buddhas I fancy are much more likely to be Jaina Tirthankaras, which are so easily added when there is so much plain surface, and as the " temple " shows that the cave was after- wards appropriated by the Jains, nothing is more probable than that they should ornament the walls by carving such figures upon them. Broadley is more distinct. " Outside the door," he says, " and 3 feet to the west of it, is a headless figure of Buddha cut in the rock, and close to it an inscription in the Ashoka character/' ^ But as neither Cunningham nor Kittoe saw either, and they do not
Reports, vol. i. p. 49. 2 Kittoe, J. A. S. B., Sept. 1847, Plate XLII.
3 Indian Antiquari/, vol. i. p. 74,
RAJGIR. 49
appear in Peppe's photograph from which the woodcut is taken, we must pause before accepting his statement. On the whole, therefore, taking the evidence as it stands, there seems no good reason for doubting that the Son Bhandar caves belong to the Great Mauryan dynasty, B.C. 319 to 180. At the same time the whole evidence tends to show that they are more modern than the dated caves at Barabar, and that they were consequently excavated subsequently to the year 225 b.c.
We are fortunately relieved from the necessity of discussing the theory, so strongly insisted upon by General Cunningham, that the Son Bhandar cave is identical with the Sattapanni cave, where the first convocation was held,^ from the fortunate discovery by Mr. Beglar of a group of caves which almost undoubtedly were the seven caves that originally bore that name (Sapta pama, seven leaved).^ On the northern side of the Yaibhara (Webh^ra) hill
1 Cunningham, Arch. Report, vol. iii. pp. 140 to 144.
2 Although we may not be able to fix with precision either the purpose for which the Son Bhandar caves were excavated, nor their exact date, it is quite clear they are not the Sattapanni cave, near which, according to all tradition, the first convocation was held immediately after the decease of the founder of the religion. In the first place, a hall, only 34 feet by 1 7, about the size of an ordinary London drawing-room, is not a place where an assembly of 500 Arhats could assemble, and the verandah, 8 feet wide, would add little to the accommodation for this purpose. It is hardly worth while attempting to refute in any great detail the various arguments brought forward in favour of this hypothesis, for there is no proof except the assertion of modern Ceylonese and Burmese authorities, who knew nothing of the localities, that the convo- cation was held in a cave at all, and everything shows that this was not the case. The Mahawanso (p. 12) states that it was in a splendid hall like to those of the Devas at the entrance of the Sattapanni cave. Mr, Beal's Translation of Fa Hian (p. 118) makes exactly the same assertion, but with an ambiguity of expression that might be construed into the assertion that it was in and not at the cave that the convocation was held. But Remusat's translation, as it is in strict accordance with the more detailed statements of Hiuen Thsang, is at least equally entitled to respect. He says : — ♦' Au nord de la montagne, et dans un eudroit ombrage, il y a une maison de pierre nomme Tchheti, c'est le lieu ou apres le Nirvana de Foe, 500 Arhans recueillirent la col- lection des livres sacres." ^ Hiuen Thsang makes no mention of a cave, but describes the foundations which he saw of " une grande maison en pierre," which was built by Ajatasatru for the purpose in the middle of a vast forest of bambus.^ Even the Burmese authorities, Avho seem to have taken up the idea of its having been held in a cave, assert that the ground was first encircled with a fence, — which is impossible with a cave, — and within which was built a magnificent hall.^ The ti'uth seems to be
1 Foe Kue Ki, 272. ■ Julien, vol. iii. p. 32, » Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 354.
Y H2. D
50 EASTERN CAVES.
there exists a group of natural caverns, six in number, but there is room for a seventh, and evidence that it did originally exist there. As unfortunately Mr. Beglar is not an adept at plan drawing, his plan and section (pp. 92 and 96) do not make this so clear as might be desired, in fact without his text, his plans would be unintelligible. With their assistance we gather that owing to some abnormal configuration of the rocks there are at this spot a series of fissures varying in width as 4, 6, 8, and 10 feet, and ranging from 6 to 12 feet in depth (p. 96). What their height is is not stated, nor can the fact be ascertained from the drawings, it is not however of much importance.^ The real point that interests us most in this instance is, that as in the Jarasandha-ka-Baithak {ante, p. 33) with its 15 cells, we have the earliest known example of a structural Yihara in India, so here we have the earliest known instance of a rock — we can hardly add — cut Vihara with 7 cells, and for both of which we have historical or at least traditional evidence, to show that they existed contemporaneously with, if not before, the lifetime of Buddha himself. Like all those, however, which have any claim to an antiquity earlier than the age of Asoka (b.c. 250), it is a mere group of natural caverns without a chisel mark upon them, or anything to indicate that they were not rather the lairs of wild beasts than the abodes of civilised men.
There are still two other caves or groups of caves at Rajgir, which are of considerable interest from their historical, though ceii/ainly
that the modern Buddhists, like the mediaeval Christians in Palestine, thought every- thing was, or at least ought to have been, done in a cave, but when read with care, there is certainly nothing except in the most modern writings to indicate that this was the case in this instance, and there certainly is no cave in Rajagi-iha which is fitted or ever could have been made suitable for such a purpose. The convocation was in fact held in one of those gi'eat halls of which we have several instances among the western caves. The last woodcut, however, representing one from the rail at Bharhut, 150 years B.C., and one at Kanheri shown in plan, Plate LIV., with the examples to be described hereafter at Mahavallipur and probably also the Nagarjuni cave at Barabar just described, show us the form of Dharmasalas that were in use among the Buddhists in that age, and were pei'fectly suited to the purposes of such an assembly. It pro- bably was a building measuring at least 100 feet by 50. like the cave at Kanheri, with a verandah of 10 feet all round. With the knowledge we now have of the archi- tecture of Asoka's time there would be no difl&culty in restoring approximately such a hall, and in a general history it might be well to attempt it, but it has no direct bearing on the history of cave architecture.
1 Beglar on Cunningham's Reports, vol. viii. pp. 89 to 99.
RAJGIR. 51
not from their artistic value. The first is known as the house or residence of Devadatta, the persistent enemy of Buddha. It is only a natural cavern situated at the foot of the hill in the north-eastern corner of the city at a spot marked M in Greneral Cunningham's map (Yol. III., Plate XLI.), but not described by him nor by Mr. Beglar,^ but as it is merely a natural cavern this is of little conse- quence, except as affording another example of the primitive form of all the earlier caves. In front of it is still to be seen the rock which, according to tradition, Devadatta rolled down from the mountain athwart Buddha's path and wounded a toe of his foot.'"^
The other group of caves is on the Grridharakuta hill, about 3 miles north-east from the city, is of still greater interest, as it is described minutely by both the Chinese pilgrims as a place much frequented by Buddha and his companion Ananda. The elder pilgrim describes it in the following terms : " The peaks of this mountain are pic- turesque and imposing ; it is the loftiest of the five mountains that surround the town. Fah Hian having bought flowers, incense, and oil and lamps in the new town, procured the assistance of the aged Bikshus to accompany him to the top of the peak. Having arrived there he offered his flowers and incense, and lit his lamps, so that their combined lustre illuminated the glories of the cave; Fah Hian was deeply moved, even till the tears coursed down his cheeks, and he said, Here it was in bygone days that Buddha dwelt ..... Fah Hian, not privileged to be born at a time when Buddha lived, can but gaze on the traces of his presence, and the place which he occupied."^
Neither Greneral Cunningham nor Mr. Broadley ascended the peak high enough to reach these caves ; the hill may be 100 to 150 feet in height. It was consequently reserved for Mr. Beglar to make the discovery. He followed the causeway that led to them a few hun- dred yards further, and hit at once on two about 50 feet apart, which seem to answer to Buddha's meditation cave, and the Ananda cave as described by the Chinese pilgrims. They are both natural caverns, the larger measuring 12 feet by 10, of irregular shape, but, the irregularities slightly reduced by filling in with brickwork on which are some traces of plaster, and inside there are now found some
1 ArchcBological Report, vol. viii. p. 9C.
2 Fah Hian, Seal's Translation, p. 115 ; Julien, vol. iii. p. 27.
3 Ibid, vol. iii., p. 20.
D 2
52
EASTERN CAVES.
fragments of sculpture lying about, but evidently of a much more modem date. As Mr. Beglar's map is nearly as unintelligible as his drawings, we are left to conjecture which of the two caves marked upon it are those just referred to, nor how many more exist on the spot. The text says 7, 2-f-5, but only four are shown, and the other buildings he describes cannot be identified on it.^ Enough, however, is sho^vn and said to make it quite clear that these are the caves referred to by the Chinese pilgrims, and to prove to us that, like all the caves connected by tradition with the name of Buddha, they are mere natural caverns untouched by the chisel, though their irregula- rities are sometimes smoothed down with brickwork and plaster, and that the latter may, in some instances at least, have been originally adorned with paintings.
s^^
^^^
^^^
SiTA Marhi Cave.
Before leaving this neighbourhood there is still one small cave that is worth mentioning as the only other known of the same age as those of Barabar and Rajgir.- It consists of a chamber rectangular in plan, and measuring 15 feet 9 inches, by 11 feet 3 inches, which is hollowed out of an isolated granite boulder lying detached by itself, and not near any other rocks. Inside it is as carefully polished as any of those at Barabar, except the inner wall where the surface has peeled off.^ Its principal interest, however, resides in its section (woodcut, No. 11), No. 11. Plan and Section which is that of a poiutcd axch rising from the floor
Sita Marhi Cave. -i -, ■,■• , j- i • j i • i
level, without any perpendicular sides, which are
1 The information regarding these caves is not to be found in the body of Mr. Beglar's report, vol. viii., but in a prefatory note, pp. xv to xxi, which makes no refer- ence to the text, which it contradicts in all essential particulars, or to Map XXII., which is equally ignored in the body of the work. In fact, it is very much to be regretted that the manner in which these reports are put together is not creditable to any of those concerned in their production.
2 It is situated at a place called Sita Marhi, 14 miles south of Rajgir, and 24 east from Gaya, as nearly as I can make out from the map attached to Mr. Beglar's report, but the spot is not marked, though the name is.
3 Mr. Beglar, from whose report (viii. p. 106) these particulars are taken, men- tions some pieces of sculpture as existing, and now worshipped in the cave, but whether they are cut in the rock or detached is not mentioned, and is of very little consequence, as they are evidently quite modern.
SITA MARHI. 53
universally to be found in the other caves here. The jambs of the doorway also slope inwards nearly in the ratio of 3 to 4, from both which peculiarities I would infer that this may be the oldest cave in the neighbourhood. We must however have a more extended series of examples before we can form a reliable sequence in this direction, but it is only by quoting new examples as they turn up that we can hope to arrive at such a chronological scale ; in the meantime, how- ever, we may feel sure that this hermitage belongs to the great Mauryan age, but whether before or after Asoka's time must be left at present undetermined ; my impression at present is that it is the oldest thing of its class yet discovered in India.
On the banks of the Sona river, above Rohtasgarh, there are several excavations, some of them apparently of considerable extent, but they have never yet been examined, so far at least as I can learn, by anyone who could say what they were, nor of what age. We must consequently wait for farther information before attempt- ing to describe them. Further up, in the valley of the same river, at a place called Harchoka, there are some very extensive excavations, regarding which it would be very desirable some more information could be obtained. The place is situated in latitude 23° 51' 31", longitude 81° 45' 34", as nearly as maybe 110 miles due south from Allahabad, and as it is onlv 70 miles south-east from Bharhut, it seems a pity it was not visited by General Cunningham, or one of his assistants, while exploring that country in search for fragments of that celebrated stiipa. What we know of it is derived from a paper by Captain Samuells in Vol. XL. of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, p. 177 et seq., which is accompanied by a plan and section very carefully drawn, but the latter unfortunately on so small a scale that its details are undistinguishable. As Captain Samuells does not profess to be an archaeologist his text does not afford us much information, either as to the age of this excavation, nor as to the religion to which it was dedicated. If an opinion may be hazarded, from the imperfect data available, I would suggest that this cave is contemporary with the late Brahmanical caves at Elura, and consequently belongs to the 7th or 8th century, and that the religion to which it was dedicated was that of Siva.^
1 In the year 1794 Captain Blunt visited two extensive sets of caves at a place called Mara, in the neighbourhood, and described them in the seventh volume of the Asiatic
54 EASTERN CAVES.
It may at first sight appear, that more has been said in the pre- ceding pages, "vnth reference to these Behar caves than their impor- tance justifies. Looked at from an architectural point of view, this is undoubtedly the case, but from their being the oldest caves known, and their dates being ascertained with all desirable precision, a knowledge of their peculiarities forms a basis for what follows, without which our knowledge would still rest on a very unstable foundation.
From the experience gained by our examination of these caves we gather, first : —
That all the caves with which Buddha's name or actions are asso- ciated were mere natural caverns unimproved by art, except in so far as some of them have been partially lined with brickwork, but in no instance are they entitled to be called rock-cut.
Secondly. That the earliest rock-cut examples were, even inter- nally, plain unomamentcd chambers with polished walls, their roofs imitating the form of woodwork, or it may be that of bambu huts.^ That what ornament was attempted externally, as in the Lomas Rishi cave, was a mere copy of a wooden construction, and that any exten- sion that was required, as in the Son Bhandar cave, was actually executed in wood.
Thirdly. That all the jambs of the doorways slope inward, follow- ing the lines of the posts supporting the circular roofs, which were made to lean inwards to counteract the thrust inherent in that form of construction.'
Lastly. That all the rude unknown caves may be considered as anterior to the age of Chandragupta, and all those, in Behar at least, with sloping jambs may be assumed to be comprehended within the duration of the Maury an dynasty, which ended about 180 b.c. ; the angle of rake being probably the best index yet obtained for their relative antiquity.
Researches. Captain Samuells seems also to have visited them, but as he does not describe them he probably thought them of less importance than those at Harchoka.
^ In no instance is it possible to conceive that they were copies of constructions either on stone or brick.
^ I shall be veiy much sui-prised if it is not found that the walls in the Barabar caves do also lean inwards ; but they have not yet been observed with sufficient accuracy to detect such a peculiarity.
55
CHAPTER II. KATAK CAVES.
Introductory.
To the artist or the architect the group of caves sitiiated on the Udajagiri hill in Orissa is perhaps even more interesting than those in Behar just described, but to the archaeologist thej are less so, from the difficulty of fixing their dates with the same certainty, and because their forms have not the same direct bearing on the origin or history of the great groups of caves on the western side of India. [N'otwithstanding this, the picturesqueness of their forms, the richness of their sculptures and architectural details, combined with their acknowledged antiquity, render them one of the most important groups of caves in India, and one that it is impossible to pass over in such a work as this, without describing them in very considerable detail.
The caves in question are all situated in a picturesque and well wooded group of hills" that rise out of the level plains of the Delta of the Mahanaddi, almost like islands from the ocean. Their com- position is of a coarse sandstone rock, very unusual in that neigh- bourhood, but which from that circumstance offered greater facilities for their excavation than the laterite rocks with which the country everywhere abounds. Their position is not marked on any of the ordinary maps of the country, but may easily be fixed, as their bearing is 17 miles slightly to the east of south from Katak, and 4 miles north-west from Bhuvancswar. The great Saiva temple of that city, one of the oldest and finest in India, being easily dis- cernible from the tops of the hills in which the caves are excavated.
Besides the facilities for excavation, there were probably other motives which attracted the early Buddhist hermits to select these hills as their abode and continue to occupy them during three or four centuries at least. We may probably never be able to ascertain with accuracy what these reasons were, or how early they were so occupied. We know, however, that Asoka about the year 250 B.C. selected the Aswatama rocks, near Dhauli, about 6 miles south-east
56 EASTERN CAVES.
from these hills, as the spot on which to engrave one of the most complete and perfect sets of his series of edicts,^ and he hardly would have chosen so remote a corner of his dominions for this purpose, had the place not possessed some previous sanctity in the eyes of his co-religionists. Unfortunately we are not able to fix with anything like certainty the site of Danta-puri, the city in which the celebrated Tooth Relic was enshrined, and where it remained till carried off to Ceylon in the beginning of the fourth century of our era.^ It certainly was not far from this, and may have been in the immediate vicinity of the caves, though the evidence, as it at present stands, seems to favour the idea that it was at Puri where the famous temple of Jagannath now stands, some 30 miles south of the caves. The fact, however, that it is recorded by the Buddhists that the Tooth Relic was brought to this neighbourhood immediately after the cremation of his body, and the certainty of its being chosen by Asoka B.C. 250 to record his edicts, is sufficient to show that early in the history of that religion this neighbourhood was occupied by Buddhists. There is however no record or tradition of Buddha him- self ever having visited the locality, or of any event having occurred there that gave rise to the erection of any Stupa or other monument in the neighbourhood, and even Hiuen Thsang, when passing through the country in a.d. 640, does not mention any spot as sanctified by the presence or labours of Buddha or of any of his immediate disciples."* There are some 16 or 17 excavations of importance on the Udaya- giri hill, besides numerous little rock-cut hermitages — cells in which a single ascetic could dwell and do penance. All these belong to the Buddhist religion and there is one Buddhist cave in the Khandagiri hill — the Ananta. The others there, though large and important, are much more modern and all belong to the Jaina form of faith. There is also a modern Jaina temple built by the Marathas on the top of that hill, and I cannot help believing that Kittoe was correct when he says that there has been a large circular building on the corresponding summit of the Udayagiri rock ; ^ but I have not been
1 J. A. S. B., vol. xii. p. 436, for Kittoe' s plates and description of the locality.
2 J. R. A. S., vol. iii. new series, pp. 149 et seq.
3 Julieriy vol. i. 184; iii. 88.
* J. A. S. B., xii. p. 438. In a private letter from Mr. Phillips, the joint magistrate of the district, he informs me " there are the remains of some building above the Rani ka nour, i.e., on the top of the Udayagiri." It probably would require excavation to ascertain its character.
KATAK CAVE8. 57
able to ascertain for certainty whether the foundations still to be seen there are either ancient or in the form of a dagoba.
These caves were first noticed and partially described by Stirling in his admirable account of Cuttack, in the 15th volume of the Asiatic Researches published in 1824, and that was the only authority existing when I visited them in 1836. At that time, however, all the more important caves were occupied by Fakirs and Bairagis who violently resented intrusion on their premises, and besides my time was too limited for any elaborate examination of the whole. In 1838 they were visited by Lieut. Kittoe, and his account, with the drawings that accompanied it, published in the seventh volume of Prinsep's Journal for 1838, still remains the best account of these caves yet given to the world. His visit, however, like mine, was too hurried to enable him to make plans and draw details, while in his time, as in mine, the caves were still inhabited ; otherwise with more leisure and better opportunities he would have left little to be done by his successors. Since then the caves have been photographed by Col. Dixon, Mr. Murray, and others, but without descriptions or plans, so that they are of very little use for our present purposes.^
1 Some 10 years ago an opportunity occurred, which had it been availed of, would have gone far to remedy the deficiency of former explorers, and to supply an exhaustive account of these caves. In 1868-69 Babu Rajendralala Mitra conducted an expedition for that purpose, accompanied by a staff of draughtsmen and students in the school of art at Calcutta, who were to be employed in making drawings and casts of the sculptures. Their labonrs, however, were almost exclusively directed to the temples at Bhuva- neswar, he himself making only personal notes of the caves. In consequence of this, mainly, if not wholly, in consequence of reclamations, made by me on the subject, a second expedition was sent down by the Bengal Government in the cold weather of 1870-71. This was conducted by Mr. C. C. Locke of the Government school of art, and resulted in his bringing back plans of all the principal caves and casts of all the more impor- tant sculptures. These were placed in Babu Rajendralala's hands for publication, which, however, he has not yet found it convenient to carry into effect, but meanwhile I have received photographs from the casts, and plans of the caves from Mr. Locke, and these form the basis of all our real knowledge of the subject, and what is most relied upon in the following descriptions. (Two of the plans were published in my History of Indian Architecture, woodcuts 70 and 72, and five of the casts in my Tree and Serpent Worship, Plate C, published in 1873).
Through the kindness of his friend, Mr. Arthur Grote, late B.C.S., I have been permitted to see the corrected proofs of the first 56 pages of the 2nd volume of Babu Rajendras' Antiquities of Orissa, which contains his account of these caves, with the ac- companying illustrations, but under a pledge that I would not make any quotations from them, as it is possible the Babu may yet see fit to cancel them, or at all events modify
58 EASTERN CAVES.
In attempting to investigate tlie history of these caves, it is tantalizing to discover how narrowly we have missed finding in Orissa a chronicle of events during the whole Buddhist period as full, perhaps even more so, than those still found in Kashmir, Ceylon, or any other outlying provinces of India. It is true that the palm leaf records of the temple of Jagannath at Puri, in which alone the fragments of this history are now to be found, date only apparently from the 10th century, and it would be idle to look in a work compiled by Brahmans at that time for any record of the acts, even perhaps of the names, of Buddhist kings of that country, still less of their building temples or excavating caves, devoted to the purposes of their — to Brahmans — accursed heresy. Notwithstanding this, if we possessed a continuous narrative of events occurring in the province we might be able to interpolate facts so as to elucidate much that is now inexplicable and mysterious.^
What these palm leaf records principally tell us is, that from a period vaguely contemporary with Buddha, i.e., from 538-421 B.C. till 474 A.D., in fact, till Yayati Kesari finally expelled the Buddhists and established the Brahmanical religion in Orissa, the country was exposed to frequent and nearly continuous invasions of Yavanas generally coming from the north-west.' Who these Yavanas were
them to some extent before publication. This, for his own sake, I trust he will do, for as they now stand they will do him no credit either as an archaeologist or a controversialist, and he will eventually be forced to retract nearly all he has said in the latter capacity. So far as I am capable of forming an opinion on the subject, the conclusions he arrives at as to the age of the caves are entirely erroneous, and he does not pretend that his explanations of the sculptures are derived either from local traditions, or Buddhist literature, merely that they are evolved from his o-wn inner consciousness. Others may foi'm a different opinion from that I have arrived at regarding his interpretation of the scenes depicted in them ; to me they appear only as an idle waste of misplaced ingenuity and hardly worthy of serious consideration. — J. F.
1 These chronicles were very largely employed by Stirling in his History of Orissa and Cuttach, in the 15th volume of the Asiatic Researches, and still more extensively by Mr. Hunter in his Orissa, published in 1872, vol. i. pp. 198 et seq. They were also further investigated by a Calcutta Brahman Bhawanicharan Bandopadhyaya, in a work he published in Bengali, in 1843, entitled Purrtshottama Chandriha, which was very largely utilised by W. W. Hunter in his last work on Orissa, vol. i. p. 198 et seq.
2 The following chronological account of Yavana invasions is abstracted from Mr. Hunter's Orissa, vol. ii. p. 184 of the Appendix : —
B.C. 538-421. Bajra Deva. — In his reign Orissa was invaded by Yavanas from Marwar, from Delhi, and from Babul Des, the last supposed to be Iran (Persia) and Cabul. According to the palm leaf chronicle the invaders were repulsed.
KATAK CAVES. 59
it is nearly impossible to say. The name may originally have been applied to Greeks or Romans, but it afterwards was certainly understood as designating all who, from an Indian point of view, could be considered as foreigners or outside barbarians, and so it must be understood in the present instance.
The account of these Yavana invasions in the Puri Chronicle looks at first sight so strange and improbable that one might almost be inclined to reject the whole as fabulous, were it not that the last of them, that under Rekta Bahu, which Stirling looked upon as so extraordinary and incomprehensible,^ has by the publication by Turnour of the Daladawansa,^ been elevated to the dignity of an established historical f act,^ and there seems no difficulty in believing that the others may be equally authenticated when more materials are accumulated for the purpose.
It is of course impossible to form an opinion as to what reliance
B.C. 421-306. Narsingh Deva. — Another chief from the far north invaded the country during this reign, but he was defeated, and the Orissa prince reduced a great part of the Delhi kingdom.
306--184. Mankrishna Deva. — Yavanas from Kashmir invaded the country, but were driven back after many battles.
184-57. Bhoj Deva. — A great prince who drove back a Yavana invasion, and is said to have subdued all India.
Here follows the usual account of Vicramaditya and Salivahana, and we hear no more of the Yavanas till —
A.D. 319-323. Sobhan Deva. — During this reign of four years, the maritime invasion and conquest of Orissa by the Yavanas under Rekta Bahu, the Eed-armed, took place. The king fled with the sacred image of Jagannath (the Brahmanical synonym for the tooth relic), and with those of his brother and sister Balbhadra and Subhadra, and buried them in a cave at Sonpur. The lawful prince perished in the jungles, and the Yavanas ruled in his stead.
323-328. Chandra Deva, who, however, was only a nominal king, as the Yavanas were completely masters of the country. They put him to death 328 a.d.
328-474. Yavana occupation of Orissa 146 years. According to Stirling these Yavanas were Buddhists.
474-526. Yayati Kesari expelled the Yavanas and founded the Kesari or Lion dynasty. This prince brought back the image of Jagannath to Puri, and com- menced building the Temple City to Siva at Bhuvaneswar.
After this we hear no more of Yavanas or Buddhists in Orissa. The Brahmanical religion was firmly established there, and was not afterwards disturbed till the invasion of the Mahomedan Yavanas from Delhi, repeated the old story in 1510 a.d.
1 Asiatic Researches, vol. xv. p. 263.
2 J. A. S. B., vol. vi. p. 856 et seq.
^Journal R. A. S., New Series, vol. iii. p. 149 et seq.
60 EASTERN CAVES.
should be placed on the facts narrated in these palm leaf records till we see what the text is, in which they are imbedded.^ All that at present can be said regarding them, is that they are curiously co- incident with what we know, from other sources, of the introduction of Buddhism into Orissa, and with the architectural history of the province. In the present state of our knowledge it is equally diffi- cult to say how far we may place any dependence on the tradition that immediately after his death, the relics of his body were rescued from the funeral pyre and distributed to eight different cities in India.- According to these accounts the left canine tooth fell to the lot of Orissa, and was received by a king named Brahmadatta, whose son named Kasi and grandson Sunanda continued to worship and hold it in the greatest possible respect.^ These names, however, do not occur in any lists that have come down to our time, and the first, as king of Benares (Kasi), occurs so frequently in Buddhist legends and jatakas that no reliance can be placed in any tradition regarding him or his acts, as being authentic history. The second name looks like the name of his capital, and the third as one of the many Nandas who figure in the history of Magadha before the time of Asoka. Be this, however, as it may, it seems tolerably certain that a tooth, supposed to be that of Buddha, was enshrined in this province in a magnificent Chaitya, in a city called Dantapura from that circumstance, before Asoka's time, and remained there till the beginning of the fourth century a.d., when it was conveyed to Ceylon under the circumstances narrated in the Daladawansa, and where it now remains the palladium of that island under British rule.* What we gather, from all this practically is, that Yavanas from
1 A golden opportunity for effecting this was presented by Babu Kajendralala's mission to Katak in 1868-69. As a Brahman he had access to the temples and their treasures to an extent that could not be afforded to any Yavana inquirer, and indeed he seems to have intended to have transcribed and translated them (Hunter's Orissa, vol. i. p. 198, note), but his ambition to be considered an archaeologist of the European type, led him to neglect a task for which he was pre-eminently fitted, and to waste his time instead, in inventing improbable myths to explain the sculptures in the caves.
2 Journal Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, vol. vii. ; p. 1014 ; Foe Koue Ki, 240.
3 Tumour's account of the Daladawansa, J. A. S. B., vol. vi., p. 856 et seq.
* I have already detailed so fully the circumstances under which the transfer took
place in a paper on the Amravati tope, which I read to the Asiatic Society in 1847
J. R, A. S., vol. iii. N.S., pp. 132 et seq.), that I may be excused repeating what T
then said. The particulars will also be found, Tree and Serpent Worship, pp.
173 ct seq.
KATAK CAVES. 61
the north-west, probably bringing Buddhism with them, invaded Orissa before the time of Asoka, and consequently before the first rock-cut temple was excavated. It seems also nearly certain that Orissa remained Buddhist, and the tooth relic was honoured there — intermittently it may be by the kings — but certainly by the people, down to the year 322 a.d.^ when it was transferred to Ceylon, and subsequently to this, that the province remained Buddhist under the last Yavana dynasty, 328 to 474 a.d., when that religion was finally abolished by the Kesari dynasty of kings.
There is no evidence that this last dynasty excavated any caves, and as there are no remains of any structural buildings belonging to the Buddhist religion, in the province, our history halts here, and there is at present nothing to lead us to believe that any of the caves were excavated within even a century before 322. The archi- tectural history of the province, in Buddhist times is consequently, it must be confessed, very incomplete, and all that remains to be done is to try and find out when the earliest cave was excavated, and then to trace their development, so far as it can be done, till the time when cave digging ceased to be a fashion in Orissa.
As just mentioned, history will hardly help in this. Such records as we have, were written, or rather compiled, by Hindus, haters of Buddhism, and not likely to mention the names of kings belonging to that sect, and still less to record any of their actions or works. Inscriptions hardly give us greater assistance. It is true about one half of the caves at Udayagiri do bear inscriptions, but none of them have dates, and none of the names found in them have yet been identified with those of any king who figures in any of our lists. What they do tell us, however is, from the form of the cha- racters employed that all the inscribed caves are anterior to the first century B.C. Unfortunately, however, the two principal and most interesting caves, the Rani ka Nur and the Granesa Grumpha, have no contemporary inscriptions, so that this class of evidence for their age, is not available. There remains consequently only the evidence of style. For that, fortunately, the materials are abun-
1 There is a disci-epancy here of about 10 years between the dates in the Orissan chronicles and those derived from the Mahawanso according to Turnour. On the whole I am inclined, from various collateral pieces of evidence, to place most reliance on that derived from the Puri chronicles.
62 EASTERN CAVES.
dant, and the testimony is as complete as could well be expected. We have at least three monuments, whose date we may say is known with sufficient certainty for our purposes, and which, as we shall pre- sently see, were almost as certainly contemporary with these caves.
The first of these is the rail which Asoka (b.c. 250) is said to have erected round the Bodhi tree at Buddha Gaya. Yery little of it remains, and none of it in situ, still there is enough of it existing to show exactly what the style of sculpture was at that age. Unfortu- nately, however, it has never been photographed, or at least no photo- graphs of it, except of one fragment, have reached this country, and the drawings that have been published are very far from being satisfactory. The best set of drawings yet made were by Major Markham Kittoe, more than thirty 3'ears ago. They are now in the library at the India Office, but have never been published. Those in General Cunningham's " Reports " are far from complete,^ and by no means satisfactory, and the same may be said of the set engraved by Babu Eajendralala Mitra, in his work on Buddha Gaya,^ just published. Fortunately the latter does give one photo- graph of one gate pillar (Plate L.), but whether taken from a cast or from the stone itself is not clear. Whichever it is, it is the only really trustworthy document we have, and is quite sufficient to show how little dependence can be placed on General Cunning- ham's representation of the same subject, and by implication on the drawings made by A. P. Bagchi for the Babu's work, which are in no respect better than the General's, if so good. It would of course be a great advantage if a few more of the sculptures had been photographed like the pillar represented on Plate L., but it, though it stands alone, is quite sufficient to show what the style of sculpture was which prevailed in the third century B.C., when it was erected.
The Bharhut Tope, which is the second in our series, has been much more fortunate in its mode of illustration. All its sculptures have been photographed by Mr. Beglar and published with careful descriptions by its discoverer. General Cunningham.^ The date, too, has been assumed by him to be from 250 to 200 B.C. on data
1 Reports, vol. i. Plates YUl. to XI.; vol. iii. Plates XXVI. to XXX.
2 Buddha Gaya, Plates XXXIII. to XXXVIII.
* The Stupa of B liar hut, by General A. Cunniughara, London, 1879.
KATAK CAVES. 63
which are generally supposed to be sufficient for the purpose. I would suggest, however, that as this date is arrived at principally by calculating backwards at a rate of 30 years per reign from Dhanabhuti II., and as 16 years on the average is a fairer rate, it may be placed by him at least 50 years too early ; the more especially as even that king's reign is only determined from a slight variation in the form of the letters used in the inscriptions, which is by no means certain.^ On the whole I fancy 200 to 150 B.C. is a safer date to rely upon in the present state of our knowledge. For myself I would prefer the most modern of these two dates as the most probable. It is, at all events, the one most in accordance with the character of the sculpture, which is, as nearly as may be, half way between those of the rail at Buddha Gaya, and those found on the gateways at Sanchi.^
^ The Stupa of Bharhut, pp. 1 5 and 16.
2 From the great similarity that exists between the alphabetical characters found at Bharhut, and those employed by Asoka in his numerous inscriptions, General Cunningham was no doubt perfectly justified in assuming that the stupa's age could not be far distant from that of his reign. At the same time, however, almost as if to show how little reliance can be placed on Palaeographic evidence alone, where extreme precision is aimed at, and no other data are available, he quotes an inscription found at Mathura recording some gifts of a king of the same name, whom he calls Dhana- bhuti II., and joins the two together in his genealogical lisi, with only one name, that of Vadha Pala, between them. {Stupa at Bharhut, p. 16.)
When General Cunningham first published this Mathura inscription {Reports, III., p. 36, Plate XVI.) he placed it in a chronological series, between one dated Samvat 98 and another dated Samvat 135, and from the form of its characters he was no doubt correct in so doing, more especially as in Plate XIV. of the same volume, he quotes another inscription of Huviskha dated Samvat 39, where the alphabet used is very little, if at all earlier. If the Samvat referred to in these inscriptions was that of Vikramaditya, as the General assumes, this would place this second Dhanabhuti about A.D. 50 or 60. But as it seems certain this era was not invented at that time, it must be Saka, and accordingly he could not have reigned before the end of the second century of our era, and his connexion with the Bharhut stupa is out of the question.
Another point that makes the more modern date extremely probable, is that the sculpture on the Mathura pillar represents the flight of the prince, Siddhartha, vfith. the Gandharvas holding up the feet of his horse in order that their noise might not awaken the sleeping guards {Stupa at Bharhut, p. 16). As General Cunningham knows, and admits, no representations of Buddha, are found either at Bharhut or Sanchi(.%«/>a at Bharhut, p. 107), and this legend, though one of the most common among the Gandhara sculptures, does not occui- in India, so far as is at present known, before the time of the Tope at Amravati in the fourth century {Tree and Serpent Worship, Plate LIX.
64 EASTERN CAVES.
The Sanclii Tope, which forms the third of the series, has also been illustrated with all the detail requisite for a proper under- standing of its historical and artistic position. In the first place we have General Cunningham's work on the subject published in 1854, which is the foundation of our historical knowledg-e of this tope, to which may be added an extensive series of photographs by Captain Waterhouse, made in 1862. We also possess a beautiful series of drawings by Colonel Maisey ; and in addition to an exhaus- tive transcript of its sculptures, by Lieutenant Cole,^ there are also the casts he brought home, and copies of which are now in the South Kensington and Edinburgh Museums.
From all these data the date of this monument has been ascer- tained with sufficient precision for our present purposes at least. The southern gateway, which is the earliest, seems to have been erected by a king who reigned between the 10th and the 28th year of the Christian era, and the other three gateways during the remaining three-quarters of that century.-
There is still a fourth building equally important for the general history of architecture in India, though not bearing so directly as that of the caves in Orissa as the other three. The principal sculp- tures of the tope at Amravati were executed during the course of the fourth century of our era,^ and are perhaps the most beautiful and perfect Buddhist sculptures yet found in India, and as such full of interest for the history of the Art. It cannot, however, be said that any of the sculptures in the caves at Udayagiri are so modern as they are, but this being so, marks at all events the limit beyond which the Orissan caves cannot be said to extend. On the other hand, with our imperfect knowledge of the Buddha Glaya rails it is
fig. 1.), and consequently this sculpture cannot certainly be earlier than the second century a.d., and may be much more modern. It is just possible, no doubt, that it may not be integral, but may have been added afterwards when the larger rails were inserted, which cut through the inscription. This, however, is hardly probable, but until this is explained all the evidence, as it now stands, tends to prove that this Mathura inscription is much more likely to be 200 years after Christ instead of 200 before that era, as General Cunningham seems inclined to make it.
1 All these have been utilised, and form the first 45 plates of my Tree and Serpent Worship, pubhshed in 1873, second edition.
2 Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 99.
3 Tree and Serpent Worship, Plates XLVI. to C. (For dates see p. 178,) pi-obably from about a.d. 322 to 380.
KATAK CAVES. . 65
not easy to determine whether any of these caves are really so old as the time of Asoka. From a comparison of their details we may, however, feel certain that some of these caves are certainly con- temporary with the rail at Bharhut, others with the gateways at Sanchi. Although, therefore, we cannot fix the limit either way with absolute certainty, we may feel confident that all those which are most interesting from an architectural point of view, were excavated during the three and a half centuries which elapsed between the years 250 B.C. and 100 a.d. Some of the smaller and ruder examples may be earlier, but none of them have any charac- teristics which would lead us to assign them to a more modem epoch than that just quoted.
Y 132
66
CHAPTER III. HATHI GUMPHA.
All who have written on the subject are agreed that the Hathi Giimpha or Elephant Cave, is the oldest that exists in these hills. It is, however, only a natural cavern of considerable extent, which may have been slightly enlarged by art, though there is no distinct evidence that this was so. At all events there is certainly no archi- tectural moulding or form, to show that it was ever occupied by man and not by wild animals only, except a long inscription in 17 lines engraved on the smoothed brow of the rock above it. It is consequently of no value whatever in an architectural object, and from an archseological point of view its whole interest resides in the inscription, which, so far as is at present known, is the earliest that has yet been found in India.
A very imperfect attempt to copy this inscription accompanies Mr. Stirling's paper on Cuttack in the 15th volume of the Asiatic Researches, but so badly done as to be quite illegible. The first real copy was made by Lieutenant Kittoe in 1837, and though only an eye sketch was done with such marvellous exactness, that Mr. Prinsep was enabled to make a very correct translation of the whole, which he published in the sixth volume of the Bengal Asiatic Journal (pp. 1080 et seq.). From the more matured and priestly style of composition with which it commences, he was inclined to consider it more modern than the edicts of Asoka, and assumed the date to be about 200 b.c, a date which I, and every one else, was at the time, led to adopt in deference to the opinion of so distinguished a scholar. It has since, however, been more carefully re-examined by Babu Rajendralala Mitra, by personal inspection on the spot, and with the aid of photographs. For reasons which seem to me sufficient to establish his conclusion, he places it about a century earlier, B.C. 300 or 325. One of the more important data for the earlier date is the occurrence in the 12th line of the name of Nanda, king of Magadha, of which Mr. Prinsep does not seem to have been aware ; and as it is used apparently in the past tense, it looks as if the kmg Aira who caused this inscription to be written, came after
HATHI GUMPHA. 67
these predecessors of the Mauryan dynasty. It may, however, be that he was only contemporary with the Nandas and with the first Mauryan kings. At the same time all the historical allusions which this inscription contains seems to show that he must have lived before the time when Asoka carved his edicts at Dauli.
The Hathi Gumpha inscription represents the king as oscillating between the Brahmanical and the Buddhist forms of faith, and though he finally settled down to the latter belief, the whole tenor of the narrative is such, that we are led to believe that the Brahmanical was the prevalent faith of the country, and that he was, if not the first, at least one of the earliest converts to Buddhism. This could hardly have been the case had Asoka' s inscriptions at Dauli — almost in sight of this cave — been in existence when it was engraved, and he could hardly have failed to allude to so powerful an emperor, had he ruled in Orissa before his time. Altogether, it seems from the contents of the inscription so much more probable that Aira should have ruled before the rise of the great Maurya dynasty, than after their establishment, that I feel very little hesita- tion in coming to the conclusion that 300 B.C., or thereabouts, is the most probable date for this inscription.^
In so far as the history of cave architecture is concerned the determination of the age of this inscription is only a political question, not afiecting the real facts of the case. As it is avowedly the earliest thing here, if its date is 200 B.C., all the caves that show marks of the chisel are more modern, and must be crowded into the period between that date, and the epoch at which it can be ascertained that the most modern were excavated. If, on the other hand, its date is about 300 B.C., it allows time for our placing the oldest and simplest caves as contemporary with those just described in Behar, and allows ample time for the gradual development of the style in a manner more in conformity with our experience of cave architecture in the west of India.
1 It seems that the vowel marks in the word which Prinsep read as " Suke " in the first line are so indistinct, that it is more probable the word ought to be read Saka : and if this is so it may lead to an interesting national indication. I submitted the passage to Professor Eggling, of Edinburgh, and in reply he informs me that tne passage may very well be read " By him who is possessed of the attributes of the famous Saka (race)." If this is so, he may have been either one of those Yavanas who came from the north-west, or at least a descendant of some of those con- querors.
68 EASTERN CAVES.
Thougb. I am myself strongly of opinion that the true date of this inscription is about 300 B.C., the question may very well be left for future consideration. The important lessons we are taught by the peculiarities of the Hathi Gumpha are the same that we gathered from the examination of those in Behar. It is that all the caves used by the Buddhists, or held sacred by them anterior to the age of Asoka, are mere natural caverns unimproved by art. With his reign the fashion of chiselling cells out of the living rock commenced, and was continued with continually increasing magnificence and elaboration for nearly 1,000 years after his time.
Before proceeding to describe the remaining excavations in these hills, it may be as well to advert to a peculiarity we learn as much from the sculptures of the Bharhut Tope as from the caves of Behar. It is, that during the reign of Asoka, and for 100 years afterwards, it was the fashion to add short inscriptions to everything. Not only as already pointed out are all the Behar caves inscribed, but almost all the Bharhut sculptures are labelled in the most instructive manner, which renders these monuments the most valuable contri- bution to Buddhist legendary history that has been brought to light in modern times. By the time when the gateways of the Sanchi Tope were erected, the fashion had unfortunately died out. It still con- tinued customary for donors of pillars, or of parts, to record their Danams or gifts, but no description of the scenes depicted, nor is any other information afforded, beyond the name and condition of the donor, who generally, however, was a private person, and his name consequently of no historical value.^
Bagh and Sarpa, or Tiger and Serpent Caves and smaller
Cells.
Guided by these considerations and the architectural indications, it is probable that we may assume the Tiger and Serpent caves to be the oldest of the sculptured caves in these hills. The former is a capriccio certainly, not copied from any conceivable form of stone architecture, nor likely to be adopted by any people used to any so in-
1 In the old temple of Papanath, at Pattadkal, tliis fashion seems to have been re- vived, for once at least, for all the sculptures on its walls are labelled in characters probably of the fifth century. Arch, Survey of West. India, 1st Report, p. 36.
BAGH AND SARPA. 69
tractable material as stone in their constructions. It is, in fact, a mass of sandstone rock fashioned into the semblance of the head of a tiger. The expanded jaws, armed with a row of most formidable teeth, form the verandah, while the entrance to the cell is placed where the gullet in a living animal would be. There is a short inscription at the side of the doorway, which _._ --^
according to Prinsep reads " Exca- ^ ^ '"»fc^vr>-jHL/L — .'
vated by Ugra Aveda " (the anti- vedist), which looks as if its author was a convert from the Brahmanical to the Buddhist religion. Before the first letter of this inscription there is a well-known Buddhist symbol, which is something like a capital Y standing on a cube or
box, and after the last letter is No. 12. TigerCave, Udayagiri,f^omadraw- a swastika.^ These two symbols iug by Capt. Kittoe.
are placed at the beginning and end of the great Aira inscription in the Hathi Gumpha, though there their position is reversed, the swastika being at the beginning, the other symbol at the end. The meaning or name of this last has not yet been ascertained, but it occurs in conjunction with the swastika very frequently on the earliest Buddhist coins.^ The probability, therefore, is that these two inscriptions cannot be far apart in date, and as the jambs of doorway leading into the cell of the Tiger cave slope considerably inwards, there seems no reason for doubting that this cave may not be only slightly more modern than the Aira inscription in the Hathi cave here, and contemporary with the Asoka caves in the Barabar hills.
The same remarks apply to the Sarpa or serpent cave. It is only, however, a small cubical cell with a countersunk doorway with jambs sloping inwards at a considerable angle. Over this doorway, in a semicircular tympanum, is what may be called the bust of a three- headed serpent of a very archaic type. It has no other sculptures. Its inscription merely states that it is " the unequalled chamber of Chulakarma."
There is a third little cell called the Pavana, or purification cave,
1 J. A. S. B., vol. vi. p. 1073.
2 J. A. S. B., and Thomas's Prinsep, vol. i. Plates XIX. and XX.
70 EASTERN CAVES.
which bears an inscription of the same Chulakarma,^ but is of no architectural significance. All these, consequently, may be of about the same date, and if that is the age of Asoka, it makes it nearly certain that the Hathi Gumpha with its Aira inscription must belong to the earlier date ascribed to it above. If for no other reason at least for this, because after carving these, and a great number of small neatly chiselled cells, apparently of the same age, which exist in these hills, some inscribed, some not, it is impossible to fancy any king adopting a rude cavern, showing no marks of a chisel, as a suitable place on which to engrave his autobiography.
Besides these smaller caves which, though numerous, hardly admit of description, there are six larger Buddhist caves in these hills, in which the real interest of the group is centred. Their names and approximate dates may be stated as follows : —
The Ananta, on the Khanda^iri hill | oaa j. i nn
rrn TT -1 li m ^ Y 200 tO 150 B.C.
Ihe Vaikuntha. Two-storeyed -J
X i;-. ^ ^^^ r^o inscriptions. 150 to 50 B.C. Jaya Vijaya -J
Rani ka Nur. Two storeyed ; no inscription ; first century b.c.-
Ganesa. One storey ; no inscription ; first century a.d.
Ananta.
Though small, the Ananta is one of the most interesting caves of this group. '^ As will be seen from the annexed woodcut it is somewhat
1 These inscriptions and with the information here retailed, are abstracted from Prinsep's paper in the sixth volume of his Journal, pp, 1072 ct seq., and Plates LI V. and LVIII.
2 In his work on Buddha Gaya, just published, Babu Rajendralala Mitra, at p. 169, assigns these caves to " the middle of the fourth century before Christ," say 350 b.c, oi about three centuries earlier than I place it.
3 When I was at Khandagiri this cave was not known, nor does Kittoe seem to have been aware of its existence. Even now I have been unable to procure a photograph of it, nor any drawing of its details, many of which would be extremely useful in determin- ing its peculiarities. We must wait till some one who knows something of Buddhism and Buddhist art visits these caves before we can feel sure of our facts. I wrote on April last to Mr. Locke, who made the casts of its sculptures, asking for some