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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
There are few objects of antiquarian research that have attracted more attention from the learned in Europe, than the history and purposes of the Cave Temples of India, but if we except the still unexplained antiquities of Mexico, I know none regarding which so little that is satisfactory has been elicited, or about which so many, and such discordant opinions exist: and while the age of every building of Greece and Rome is known with the utmost precision, and the dates of even the Egyptian monuments ascertained with almost as much certainty as those of mediæval cathedrals, still all in India is darkness and uncertainty, and there is scarcely a work on architecture published, or lecture read, which does not commence by a comparison between the styles of India and Egypt, and after pointing out a similarity which seems to be an established point of faith in Europe, though in reality no two styles are more discordant, the author generally proceeds to doubt which is the more ancient of the two, and in most cases ascribes the palm of antiquity to the Indian as the prototype. Yet, in truth, Egypt had ceased to be a Nation before the earliest of the cave temples was excavated, and if we except the copies of earlier structures erected by the Ptolemies and Cæsars, there is nothing on the banks of the Nile which does not belong to a different and far more ancient epoch than anything in India.
page 31 note 1 Gumpha, is the local designation for a cave at Cuttack; garbha or garbha, would I believe be more correct.
page 32 note 1 There are various ways of spelling and pronouncing the name of this place. The most popular, and the one by which it is generally known in Europe, is Mahabalipooram, “The city of the great Bali;” but which is now generally allowed to be incorrect, though adopted with a slight variation of spelling by Messrs. Chamber and Goldingham. Mr. Babington calls it Mahamalaipur, “The city of the great mountain,” having found it so called in a Tamul inscription there.
Locally, it is called Mahavellipore, Maveliveram, Mailurum, &c. I have throughout this paper adopted the first, as most resembling its popular name, without pretending to any etymological correctness, or to any hypothesis regarding its origin or history.
page 34 note 1 Plate No. 1.
page 34 note 2 Plate No. 2.
page 35 note 1 Plate No. 3.
page 36 note 1 Plate No. 4.
page 37 note 1 Essay on the Architecture of the Hindús, , 4to. London, 1834.Google Scholar
page 37 note 2 Mahawanso, , pp. 22 and 23.Google Scholar
page 41 note 1 Plate No. 1.
page 43 note 1 In one cave, the Jodey Gumpha, some figures seem to be worshipping the Bo Tree; bee Kittoe's plate above referred to.
page 44 note 1 See Transactions of Bombay Literary Society, vol. ii., p. 194.Google Scholar
page 46 note 1 Plate No. 5, fig. 1.
page 46 note 2 Fig. 2.
page 48 note 1 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. v. Plate 29.
page 48 note 2 Plate No. 6.
page 50 note 1 Plate No. 3.
page 52 note 1 Plate No. 2 and 7.
page 53 note 1 Compare Plates No. 6 and 7.
page 57 note 1 In the Atlas to Lord Valentia's Travels, a detailed plan of this cave is given, on which the dimensions taken by the scale are forty-six feet wide by one hundred and twenty-six feet long; and as the plan appears to have been drawn with considerable care, (by Mr. Salt, I believe,) and these figures are repeated in the text, I was a good deal staggered by finding so great a discrepancy, and inclined at first to give up my own as incorrect. I have however retained them, not only because they were taken with care, and I cannot see how so great an error could have crept into them; but also, because Lord Valentia's dimensions are quite at variance with those of all the Chaitya caves I am acquainted with, as the following table will show.
While Valentia, Lord's dimensions for the Karli cave would be as 1 to 2–739.Google Scholar
It is not however only to confirm my own measurements that I have quoted this table, but to show on how regular a system these caves were excavated, and also as confirming their relative ages, as arrived at in the text from other grounds; for it will be observed, that the oldest caves are longest in proportion to their breadth; and that the ratio diminishes as we descend in the series in an almost perfect progression, the only apparent exception being the Kannari cave; but if that is a copy of the Karli one, as I have stated in the text, this is accounted for. If I am mistaken in placing it as a copy in the ninth century, it must on many grounds take its place as it stands in this table.
Another apparent exception is the small cave, No. 9, Ajunta, which in the text I placed in the same age as the one next it, and I confess I am at present unable to offer any suggestion to account for the discrepancy.
page 60 note 1 In the Mahawanso, (page 12,) it is said that the first convocation was held “in a splendid hail built at the entrance of the Sattapani cave,” which would seem to prove that the cave then existed. The Mahawanso, however, was compiled one thousand years after that event, and the cave which may have been a subsequent excavation designed to mark the place where the meeting was held; or at best, it is but a tradition that such was the case.
In like manner it is mentioned in the Chinese work quoted by Colonel Sykes, in his notes on the political state of ancient India, (vol. vi., p. 203, Journal R.A.S.,) that Ananda, “after the death of Buddha, collected five hundred pious men in the cavern of Pi pho lo, and, jointly with them, collected the vinayas.” This is evidently the same tradition still further improved upon, and coming from an authority so distant in date and locality, is not entitled to much respect, unless indeed some cave could be discovered of that date; or some circumstantial evidence be adduced to corroborate a tradition which may easily have sprung up from the importance which caves had assumed, as a form of Buddhist architecture, at the time these works were written.
page 61 note 1 Plates No. 3 and No. 8.
page 65 note 1 Plate No. 8.
page 68 note 1 I am not quite certain this should not be number twenty; the note was made at Salsette, and I fear the drawing was wrongly numbered: for the context it is immaterial which.
page 70 note 1 These names are taken from Colonel Tod's description of these caves in his Journal.
page 80 note 1 Plate No. 4.
page 81 note 1 Plate No. 9.
page 83 note 1 See Introduction to Wilson's Catalogue of Mackenzie, 's MSS., p. cvi.Google Scholar; also; Asiatic Researches, vol. xv., p. 316; and DrHamilton, Buchanan's Statistics of Bagulpur, p. 23.Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 Plate No 10.
