History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c25.s8.19

v2.c25.s8.19

These dated caves and buildings have also rendered another service to the science of archæology, inasmuch as they enabled us to state with confidence, even before the inscriptions were properly translated, that the principal caves at Mâmallapuram must be circumscribed within the same limits. The architecture there being so lean and poor, is most misleading, but, as hinted above, I believe it arose from the fact that it was Dravidian, and copied literally from structural buildings, by people who had not the long experience of the Buddhists in cave architecture to guide them. But be that as it may, a comparison of the Hindû sculptures at Bâdâmi with those of Elûrâ on the one hand, and Mâmallapuram on the other, renders it certain that they were practically contemporary. The famous bas-relief of Durgâ, on her lion, slaying Mahishâsura, the Minotaur,¹ is earlier than one very similar to it at Elûrâ; and one, the Virâtarûpa or Vâmana, is later by probably a century than the sculpture of the same subject in cave 3 at Bâdâmi.² Some of the other bas-reliefs are later, some earlier, than those representing similar subjects in the three series, but it seems now impossible to get over the fact that they are practically synchronous. Even the great bas-relief, which I was inclined to assign to a more modern period, probably belongs to the 7th or 8th century. The great Nâga king, whom all the world are there worshipping, is represented as a man whose head is shaded by a seven-headed serpent-hood, but also with a serpent-body from the waist downwards. That form was not known in the older Buddhist sculptures, but has now been found on all the Orissan temples (for instance Woodcut No. 318), and frequently at Bâdâmi.³ This difficulty being removed, there seems no reason why this gigantic sculpture should not take the place, which its state of execution would otherwise assign to it—say A.D. 700—as a mean date, subject to a subsequent adjustment.⁴