Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5.14

c5.14

The best examples of the art products of the post-Mauryan period are the great stone railing around the temple at Bodh Gaya and the series of early Cave Temples at Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri in the Puri District of Orissa. An earlier generation of antiquarians was inclined to assign the railing around the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya to the Mauryan period, but the late Dr. Theodore Bloch found this view to be incorrect from engraved inscriptions on a portion of the railing, which he discovered in the Brahmanical Monastery at Bodh Gaya.² To judge from the inscriptions incised on them, the caves in the Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri Hills, near Bhuvaneśvara, may be divided into two distinct groups carved at two different periods. The first group belongs to the post- Mauryan period and was excavated sometime earlier or later than the great inscription of King Khāravela, on the roof of the Hathigumpha. There is a good deal of controversy about the date of this inscription. While scholars like Prof. Lüders¹ and the late Dr. Fleet² have declared that there is no date in this inscription, certain other scholars think that it does contain a date which is the year 164 of the Mauryan Era. Mr. K. P. Jayaswal at first agreed with the latter view,³ but later on gave another interpretation to the passage in dispute.⁴ There is no doubt about the fact, however, that the inscription of Khāravela is later than the inscriptions of Aśoka and earlier than the group of the early Kushan inscriptions, which Bühler calls ‘inscriptions in the Kshatrapa characters’.⁵ The earlier group of the caves at Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri are the latest examples in India of the influence of early Persian art on Indian sculpture. In this group the best examples are the Queen’s Cave, called locally Rāṇī Nūr or Rāṇī Navara Gumphā, which is one of the biggest cave temples in India and the Ananta Cave. The former was, perhaps, the residence of the Jaina ascetics referred to in the closing lines of Khāravela’s inscription. It consisted of three wings, one in the centre and one on either side. It is two-storied and on both storeys, the doors and windows are flanked by slender columns with Persepolitan capitals adorned with lions, elephants, bulls as well as other mythical winged creatures. Their execution is very feeble in comparison with that of the lions, etc., carved on Aśoka’s capitals.⁶ None of these caves bear any signs of having borne any polish like the caves on the Barābar and Nāgārjuni Hills. Both storeys of the main wing of the Queen’s Cave bear series of basreliefs which probably represent scenes from the lives of the Jaina Hierarchs, called Tīrthaṃkaras, and belong to the same period as the four main gateways of the Great Stūpa at Sanchi. The posture of all men and animals in them betrays distinct signs of becoming more and more formal. There is a gap of an entire millennium between the dates of this earlier group of caves at Khaṇḍagiri and the later one, which was excavated sometime in the 9th or 10th century A. D.