Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c13.2

c13.2

HINAYĀNA CAVES: Aśoka had initiated the rock-cut architecture in the Barābar hills of Bihar. They are styled as *Kubhā* in the epigraphs and are of a very simple and primitive type without any pillars as mentioned earlier. This movement was continued by his grandson Daśaratha who had caves excavated in the Nāgārjunī hills and made them over to the Ājīvika monks to be used as dwelling during rains (*Varshā-nisīdiyā*). Even during Aśoka's time Buddhism had reached Western India. Two groups of rock-cut caves are found there clustered round Aśoka's fourteen Rock-edicts, viz. at Junagadh or the foot of the ancient Raivataka hills in Saurāṣṭra, and the other in the vicinity of Sopara, where also a version of the Rock-edicts has been found. At Junagadh in the centre of Saurāṣṭra, Talāja in the east and Sān in the south of the peninsula, which are main centres, there are about hundred and forty caves in the form either of a single cell or a series of cells (*apavaraka*), opening into a verandah (*mukha*). None of these is truly a *Chaitya* cave for there are no *Chaitya* or *Stūpa* in any one of them except a single *Stūpa* at Talāja and another at Sān.