The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c12.10

c12.10

The finest of the very few structural chaitya-grihas yet discovered is one which Fergusson and his followers, to the confusion of their readers, put into his Dravidian compartment, though he points out its resemblance in plan to the ancient Buddhist chaitya-hall at Sânchî. This is a stone building, probably of the sixth or seventh century A.D., situated at Aihole in the Bijâpûr district of the Bombay Presidency. Although so many centuries later than the buildings of the Mauryan epoch, it may be taken parenthetically out of its chronological sequence to explain the arrangement of the great rock-cut chaitya-halls which are to be described next.