Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c13.s2.12

c13.s2.12

The principal object of these excavations was obviously to provide a monastic retreat, the chambers and cells being cut out of the coarse sandstone of which the hills are composed As the country around consists mainly of a laterite formation, the selection of this sandstone outcrop, on account of its more workable character, is understood. There are in all some thirty-five excavations, large and small, but only half of them are of any significance, some sixteen of which are in the Udaigiri hill, while there is only one of any importance on Khandagiri. Apparently laid out on no regular plan, they were evidently cut in convenient places and connected by paths, still traceable through the glades of trees. Two of these retreats consist of single cells only, three or four combine several cells having a portico with the remains of a courtyard in front, while the four largest and most elaborate are composed of galleries of chambers in double stories and overlooking a quadrangle None of the courtyards is covered in, as are most of those in other parts of India, but the fact that they are open to the sky may be due to the shallow configuration of the rock in which they are cut. Compared with the Asokan examples, or those in the Western Ghats, the workmanship on the Orissan monasteries is clumsy and crude, but such conditions may be partly accounted for by the rough texture of the sandstone. Moreover it seems to have little or no connexion with the remarkably fine phase of structural architecture and plastic art which developed in its vicinity at Bhubaneshwar and elsewhere under Brahmin patronage some centuries later. The local generic name for these Orissan monasteries is "gumpha", meaning a cave, and each is distinguished by a picturesque or appropriate prefix, as for instance the Ganesh (or Elephant) Gumpha, so called on account of two sculptured elephants forming a prominent part of the conception