Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c13.s2.18

c13.s2.18

Other monasteries on this site, treated in much the same manner as the preceding, but simpler in their formation, are the Ganesha Gumpha, the Manchapuri Gumpha, and the Ananta Gumpha. The Ganesha, or Elephant cave, is probably one of the earliest examples and displays several interesting features It is excavated in a ledge, or terrace, of rock, the exterior consisting of a columned verandah, some thirty feet wide and six feet in depth, and approached by steps flanked with figures of elephants. This scheme of sculptured animal guardians to the entrance to a rock-cut hall appears here for the first time, but it was afterwards developed with considerable effect in the Brahmanical temples excavated much later at Ellora and Elephanta, with the elephants, however, replaced by lions. The pillars forming the facade of the Ganesha Gumpha were originally five in number, and are of a type frequently found in this group, the shafts being, in section, square above and below, but octagonal in the centre, with a figure bracket at the top to support the overhanging cornice or eave. At each end of the facade is projected a pilaster *in antis*, not however repeating the conventional design of the pillars, but boldly carved in the shape of a figure—a doorkeeper, or *dwarpala*, armed with a huge spear, and above him, forming the capital to the pilaster is a kneeling humped bull. Executed a little later, the Manchapuri Gumpha or "House of Earth", and the Ananta Gumpha, the latter being on the southern, or Khandragiri hill, are composed of elements and motifs not unlike those in the Ganesha Gumpha just described, and which are common to the group as a whole These sculptured forms, especially when used in the bracket capitals, as for instance the figures astride hippogryphs, have a very ancient appearance, and seem to have emerged from an early phase of art and building construction, of which all other records have disappeared. As already remarked a similar motif was revived several centuries later in the rock-architecture of Badami, but it is so rare and distinctive as to suggest a lost tradition of some importance. The productions at Khandragiri are coarsely rendered, and not of a high standard of design or workmanship Moreover they seem to have been an end in themselves, as except in the few details referred to, they led to no further development, their forms died early in the Christian era leaving no heritage. On the other hand this Orissan rock architecture has every appearance of being a final copy, or the last stage, of a cultural movement which at one time had no little significance a method of expression strictly regional, but of a profound and moving order. What is left merely represents it in its decay.