The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s7.29

v1.c8.s7.29

the gods have to be added, as places of worship, retreat and congregation, other natural caves and also those cut into the rock for similar purposes. The Ājīvikas, a Jain sect, and the Buddhists were the first to do so; they were non-orthodox. Within Brāhmaṇism, the substitution of excavated caves for natural ones took time to evolve. There, as elsewhere, the sacredness of the particular site was to begin with, sufficient in itself; the Tīrtha, in this case was specially marked by its being a cave. The heterodox sects preceded the Hindus by many centuries in their interference with, and transformation of nature. They had already achieved magnificent results in such large, apsidal vaulted ‘churches’ as the cave temple at Karli and in rock cut monasteries like those at Nasik or Ajaṇṭā (Nos. 8, 12, 13), when about 400 A.D. Brāhmaṇical worship cut its entry into the rock. It has the shape of a small, flat roofed Garbhagṛha. To it is added, as the contemporary Gupta temples, a structural porch or maṇḍapam (Udayagiri, Bhopal, C. I.).⁹⁹