History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c14.s2: Western Chaitya Halls.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c14.s2
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Western Chaitya Halls.
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There are in the Western Ghâts and elsewhere in the Bombay Presidency six or seven important chaitya caves whose dates can be made out, either from inscriptions, or from internal evidence, with very fair approximate certainty, and all of which were excavated, if I am not very much mistaken, before the Christian Era. The oldest of these is situated at a place called Bhâjâ, 4 miles south of the great Kârlê cave in the Bôr Ghât. There is no inscription upon it, but from the
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58. Chaitya Cave, Bhâjâ. (From a Plan by J. Burgess.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
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plan (Woodcut No. 58), it will be perceived that it is a chaitya hall of the usual plan, but of no great dimensions, being only 60 ft. from the back of the apse to the mortices (*a a*), in which the supports of the wooden screen once stood. (From the woodcut (No. 60), it will be perceived that the pillars of the interior slope inwards at a considerable and most unpleasing angle.) (The rood-screen which closes the front of other caves of this class is gone,) as it is also in the case of the Kondânê and Pitalkhorâ examples, and in Cave No. 10 at Ajantâ. In other examples it is in stone, and consequently remains, but in those instances, where it was originally in wood, it has disappeared, though the holes to receive its posts and the mortices by which it was attached to the
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59. Front of a Chaitya Hall. (From a Bas-relief at Bodh-Gayâ.)
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walls are still there. (The ogee fronton was covered with wooden ornaments, which have disappeared,) though the pin-holes remain by which they were fastened to the stone. (The framework, or truss, that filled the upper part of the great front opening, no longer exists, but what its appearance was may be judged of by the numerous representations of itself with which it is covered,) or from the representation of a chaitya façade from the contemporary rail at Bodh-Gayâ (Woodcut No. 59), and there are several others on the rail at Bharaut, which are not only correct elevations of such a façade as this, but represent the wooden carved ornaments which—according to that authority—invariably adorned these façades. The only existing example of this wooden screen is that at Kârlê,¹ but the innumerable small repetitions of it, not only here but in all these caves, shows not only its form, but how universal its employment was. The rafters of the roof were of wood, and many of them, as may be seen in the woodcut, remain to the present day. Everything, in fact, that could be made in wood remained in wood, and only the constructive parts necessary for stability were executed in the rock.
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¹ Little more than thirty years ago, the screen in Kondâne chaitya cave was also tolerably entire.—'Archæological Survey of Western India,' vol. iv., frontispiece.
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60. Façade of the Cave at Bhâjâ. (From a Photograph.)
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It is easy to understand that, the first time men undertook to repeat in stone forms they had only been accustomed to erect in wood, they should have done so literally. The sloping inwards of the pillars was requisite to resist the thrust of the circular roof in the wooden building, but it must have appeared so awkward in stone that it would hardly be often repeated. As, however, it was probably almost universal in structural buildings, the doorways and openings naturally followed the same lines, hence the sloping jambs. Though these were by no means so objectionable in practice, they varied with the lines of the supports, and, as these became upright, the jambs became parallel. In like manner, when it was done, the architects could hardly fail to perceive that they had wasted both time and labour in cutting away the rock to make way for their wooden screen in front. Had they left it standing, with far less expense they could have got a more ornamental and more durable feature. This was so self-evident that it never, so far as is known, was repeated, but it was some time before the pillars of the interior got quite perpendicular, and the jambs of the doors quite parallel.
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There is very little figure sculpture about this cave; none in the interior, and what there is on the façade seems to be of a very domestic character. But on the pillars in the interior at *g* and *h* in the plan (Woodcut No. 58), we find two emblems, and at *a*, *e*, and *f* three others are found somewhat rudely formed, but which occur again so frequently that it may be worth while to quote them here (Woodcut No. 61).¹ They are known as the triratna, or trident—the central point being usually more important than here shown—the shield, and the chakra, or wheel. The two first are generally found in combination, as in Woodcuts Nos. 39 and 45, and the wheel is frequently found edged with triratna ornaments, as in the central compartment of Woodcut No. 43 from Amarâvatî. The fourth emblem here is the triratna,
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¹ See ‘Cave Temples of India,’ plate vii.
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61. Triratna. Shield. Chakra. Triratna.
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in combination with a face, and the fifth is one which is fan-shaped and frequently repeated on coins and elsewhere, but to which no name has yet been given.
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At a short distance along the face of the scarp, is an excavation of some interest, containing a group of fourteen monolithic dâgabas of various sizes. All of them have the Buddhist-rail pattern cut round the upper margin of the drum. Five under the overhanging rock vary in diameter from 4 ft. 8 in. to 6 ft. 3 in., and the front two have the square box only on the dome, as in the cave, and without the cornice, while the three behind have also the heavy cornice: that upon the largest being connected with the roof by the stone shaft of the "chhattra" or umbrella, whilst the other two had been provided with wooden shafts. Of the nine in front, the first from the north has a handsome capital 3 ft. 8 in. high, very elaborately carved (Woodcut No. 62); most of the others have been broken. One or more had only the box form without abacus, and on four of them are holes on the top as if for relics. The names of the Theras or priests, still legible on several of them, indicate that they served the place of monuments in a cemetery, though they may also have been reverenced as altars to saints.
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62. Capital of a rock-cut Dâgaba at Bhâjâ. (From a Photograph.)
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About 10 miles north-west from Kârlê, in a ravine of the Western Ghâts, are the Kondânê chaitya cave and vihâra. This chaitya is interesting, inasmuch as its façade is even a more literal reproduction of the wooden forms from which it was derived than that at Bhâjâ. Nothing could be more literal than the copying of the overhanging forms of the constructive parts of the façade, which shows no trace of stone construction in any feature, and which it would be hardly possible to construct in masonry. Its dimensions differ but little from those of the Bhâjâ chaitya, being 66½ ft. from the line of the front pillars to the extremity of the apse, 26 ft. 8 in. wide, and 28 ft. 5 in. high to the crown of the arch; the nave was 14 ft. 8 in. wide, surrounded by thirty pillars—most of which have rotted away, but which incline inwards as do the side walls of the aisles. The dâgaba was 9 ft. in diameter with a capital, like that at Bhâjâ, of about double the usual height. These two chaityas may be considered as contemporary or nearly so, and they are the finest among the four which are the very oldest specimens of their class in the west of India.¹
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¹ 'Cave Temples,' pp. 220-222 and plate 8; 'Archæological Survey of Western India,' vol. iv. pp. 8-10, and plate 1.
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Pitalkhorâ is a ravine among the Indhyâdri hills, about 12 miles south of Chalisgâm in Khandesh, where there are several caves—Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina. Unfortunately the chaitya is entirely ruined by the decay of the rock, the front half of the temple having quite disappeared. From the style of the vihâras, and a few epigraphs, we can only conclude that it must have ranked quite as early as the preceding.¹
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¹ 'Cave Temples,' pp. 242-246, and plate 15; 'Archæological Survey of Western India,' vol. iv. pp. 11-12.
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The fourth of this series will be treated of among the four Ajantâ chaitya temples. The next group of caves, however, that at Bedsâ, 10 or 11 miles south of Kârlê, shows considerable progress towards lithic construction. The screen is in stone; the pillars are more upright though still sloping slightly inwards, the jambs more nearly parallel; and, in fact, we have nearly all the features of a well-designed chaitya cave. The two pillars in front, however, as will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 63), are so much too large in proportion to the
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63. Plan of Cave at Bedsâ. (From a Plan by J. Burgess.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
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rest, that they are evidently stambhas, and ought to stand free instead of supporting a verandah. Their capitals (Woodcut No. 64, next page) are more like the Persepolitan type than almost any others in India, and are each surmounted by horses and elephants bearing men and women of bold and free execution.² From the view (Woodcut No. 65 on page 140) it will be seen how much the surface is covered with the rail decoration, a repetition on a small scale of the rails described in the last section, and which it may here be mentioned is a fair test of
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² In the Pitalkhorâ vihâra, we find the Persepolitan capital repeated with a variety of animals over it; for the Hindû artists, from their natural aptitude for modifying and adapting forms, very soon replaced the bicephalous bull and ram of the Persian columns by a great variety of animals, sphinxes, and even human figures in the most grotesque attitudes.—Dr. Le Bon, 'Les Monuments de l'Inde,' p. 15.
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64. Capital of Pillar in front of Cave at Bedsâ (From a Photograph.)
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the age of any building. (It gradually becomes less and less used after the date of these two chaitya caves, and disappears wholly in the 4th or 5th centuries; but during that period its greater or less prevalence in any building is one of the surest indications we have of the relative age of any two examples.) In this cave, as will be observed, nearly the whole of the ornamentation is made up of miniature rails, and repetitions of window fronts or façades. (It has also a semicircular open-work moulding, like basket-work, which is only found in the very oldest caves, and is evidently so unsuited for stone-work that it is no wonder it was dropped very early.) (No example of it is known after the Christian Era.) There is an inscription in this cave in an ancient form of letters, but without date, and this alone is not sufficient to fix its age absolutely without further evidence.
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65. View on Verandah of Cave at Bedsâ. (From a Photograph.)
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The next of these early caves is the chaitya at Nâsik. Its pillars internally are so nearly perpendicular that their inclination might escape detection, and the door jambs are nearly parallel.
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The façade, as seen in the woodcut (No. 66, p. 141), is a very perfect and complete design, but all its details are copied from wooden forms, and nothing was executed in wood in this cave but the rafters of the roof internally, and these have fallen down.
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66. Chaitya Cave at Nâsik. (From a Photograph.)
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Outside this cave, over the doorway, there is an inscription, stating that "the villagers of Dhambika gave the carving over it"; and another—though imperfect—on the projecting ledge over the guardian to the left of the entrance, reads that "the rail-pattern and the Yaksha were made by Nadâsirî." A third inscription, on two of the pillars of the nave, ascribes the completion of the "Chaityagriha" to Bhatapâlikâ granddaughter (?) of Mahâ-Hakusiri. The first two are in nearly pure Maurya characters, and appear to be about coeval with the inscription of Krishna-râja in the small vihâra close by, which we ascribe to about B.C. 160; and the third can hardly be much later.¹ Taking these inscriptions in conjunction with the architecture, the age of this cave hardly seems doubtful. We may accept B.C. 160 as approximately the date of its inception, though its completion may be a quarter of a century later, and, if this is so, it carries back the caves of Bhâjâ, Bedsâ, and the others, to a period considerably before that time, while, on the other hand, it as certainly is older than the Kârlê cave, which appears to come after it in age, whilst Cave No. 9 at Ajantâ may be quite as old.
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¹ 'Epigraphia Indica,' vol. viii. pp. 91-93.