Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c11.15.2

c11.15.2

That a rudimentary shelter of this kind was the beginning of the chaitya hall is proved by the character of the rock-cut chambers of the Asokan period in the Barabar hills. The inner cells of both the Lomas Rishi and Sudama examples were seemingly prepared for the reception of stupas, and are lithic copies of circular huts having thatched roofs with heavy over-hanging eaves, even the scantlings of the walls being faithfully reproduced. (Plate IX). Two other instances of this primitive origin preserved in widely separated parts of the country may be seen, one in a rock-cut chamber at Guntapalle in the Kistna district of the Madras Presidency, and another similarly rock-cut at Kondivte near Bombay. The former, which on stylistic grounds can only be a little later than those in the Barabar hills, is a copy of a circular hut with its conical thatched roof resting on a framework of wood like an inverted basket, and the stupa it accommodates is still *in situ* (Plate VIII Fig 7). The example at Kondivte is of an early manner, although it is itself later, and is evidently a survival of an old type which also shows a stupa within a circular cell (Plate VIII Fig. 4). To the inner cells an ante-chamber was attached, those in the Barabar hills being barrel-vaulted, the two compartments communicating by a doorway. Structural examples of this rudimentary arrangement appear to have been built at Taxila about the first century B.C.