The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.100

Language: English

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without its sanctuaries bearing emblems of its sectarial or specific character. It is very probable, though it is not quite certain that in the time of Aśoka emblems and images had become common, but there is literally no evidence whatever to show that a century before his time emblems and images were held in the same estimation, and that Buddhist monasteries were invariably built or excavated with prominent emblems of the faith fixed on them; and in the absence of such evidence, it is futile to accept the hypothesis, for it is no better, as a universally accepted major, and to argue upon it. The hypothesis besides takes for granted the present absence of emblems and relics as equivalent to the absence thereof in former times. It is true that in law the Scotch verdict of “not proven” is in criminal cases, as far as the prisoner is concerned, tantamount to “not guilty,” but in history absence of evidence at one time cannot be taken as proof of no evidence having ever existed. There are, doubtless, no unquestionably Buddhist images or emblems to be met with now in the Udayagiri caves, but we have no reason to suppose that they never were there in former times. Only fifty years ago, Mr. Stirling found, “strewed all around and in the neighbourhood of the Jain temple, a quantity of images of the Nirvāṇas, or naked figures worshipped by the Jain sect, executed chiefly in the grey chlorite slate rock”⁴² none of which are now traceable.

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The people of the surrounding country must have taken them away, and either destroyed them, or consecrated them as household Hindu gods. This process must have gone on for many centuries since the downfall of Buddhism and the occupation of the caves by Hindu ascetics, and it is rather remarkable that some images should have been extant fifty years ago, than that no traces of any should be found now. Mr. Stirling was not familiar with Buddhist images, for in his times researches into the antiquities of Buddhism had scarcely begun; and seeing that he mistook the images on the four sides of the model Chaityas of the Deva Sabhā for Jain deities,⁴³ it would not be unreasonable to conclude that some at least of the “quantity of images” he saw were Buddhist, those of the Nirvāṇa particularly, as we find even in our day an unmistakable Buddha image occupying the most prominent place in the Ananta Gumphā within fifty yards of the nearest Udayagiri cave. It is not known when the Jains first took possession of Khaṇḍagiri, but notwithstanding their close relationship with the Buddhists, they have never and nowhere been mindful Buddhist relics; on the contrary, as at Sārnāth and elsewhere, they have destroyed Buddhist shrines to raise temples for Pārasvanātha with their materials.

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Tradition has it that even at Udayagiri they demolished a great number of caves to devote the stones to the erection of the temple which now crowns the top of Khaṇḍagiri, and there is nothing to show that they spared the images which could be much more readily employed in building than the walls of the caves. That the image in the Ananta Cave has escaped is probably due to the fact of its being cut in low relief on the back-wall into the living rock, and could not be easily removed. Of course they brought no iconoclastic zeal to bear upon the remains they found around them, nor looked upon the destruction of images as an act of religious merit in the same way as the Moslims did, and so they removed only what they required, and spared what was not wanted by them. Doubtless these facts only [39] indicate the probability of Buddhist remains having been removed or destroyed, but do not prove that there were Buddhist images and emblems in the caves; but the bas-relief of Buddha in the Ananta Cave is unquestionable, and so are the Chaityas with Buddhist images on the Deva Sabhā. The Chaityas are particularly Buddhist, no other sect in India having ever raised or worshipped them, and they leave no doubt of at least the principal cave on Khaṇḍagiri being Buddhistical.