The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.118

v2.c16.s2.118

That the caves of Udayagiri have come to existence under some such circumstances I have every reason to believe. Bhuvaneśvara, before the commencement of the Christian era, was a flourishing town, if not the capital, of Kaliṅga. Some Buddhist hermits of great repute, or a body of monks, must have come there for missionary purposes, and, prohibited to dwell in towns, taken their stand on the hill which was near enough to admit of their going frequently to the town on their missionary errand, and for begging alms, and yet sufficiently removed from civil society to keep them aloof from its contamination; the Kaliṅga Rājās, who were noted for their devotion of Buddhism, helped them to excavate some large caves, and the monastery was complete. The little caves were, I imagine, subsequently dug by individual hermits for their respective accommodation or mortification—for the three or four feet cubic caves were undoubtedly made for the sake of undergoing some form of penance or other. If we assume that some of the missionaries first dug the small caves to display their sanctity or devotion to penance, by dwelling therein, it would follow, that they attracted the attention of the people,—for such a feat as passing night after night, say in meditation, within a cube of three feet would attract public attraction in India in a very short time,—and the wealthy among those who admired, or looked with veneration upon, such feats, would at once defray the cost of making large and commodious habitations for such saints and their followers. In either case the interval of time between the small and large caves would be limited and insignificant, and cannot be reckoned by centuries⁵⁴; there is nothing in them at any rate to support the theory of gradual development of taste and tact in cave-cutting, for the larger caves are all of one class, and [42] belong to a single cycle. Their pillars are of the same pattern; the pilasters are alike; the carved bands over them have the same outline; the Buddhist rails, either above or below the friezes, differ only in some being made of four and other of five bars; the parapets, where they occur are alike; and the general design differs so slightly as to be insignificant; and in none of these features—and these are the principal features which mark the difference of style and age—can anything be found which would warrant the assumption that the caves belong to different ages, and were cut by men in different states of civilization, or possessed of art-education differing in other respects than in individual peculiarity.