Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s19: VI. Cave Architecture
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s19
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VI. Cave Architecture
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Of the architectural remains usually ascribed to the Maurya period very few are artistically significant. Tradition ascribes a large number of stūpas and chaitya-halls to the building activities of Aśoka, but none of them exists today in their original form and plan except the excavated chaitya-halls, bearing inscriptions of Aśoka and Daśaratha, in the Barābar caves. The monolithic rail at Sārnāth in grey and polished Chunar sandstone may have been erected under the direction and patronage of Aśoka himself. Its architectural form is exactly that of the rails of Bhārhut, and must have been literally transferred into stone from contemporary wooden originals without possibly any understanding of its constructional characteristics. The plinth or the ālambana, the uprights or the stambhas, the horizontal bars or the sūchis and the coping or the uṣṇiṣa have all been just carved out of what must have been a huge slab of stone; an understanding of the constructional characteristics would have certainly made the task easier by piecing together the constituent parts of smaller slabs of stone exactly in the same way as we see them done at Bhārhut or Sāñchī or Bodhgayā. The altar or the bodhimaṇḍa at Bodhgayā is also traditionally associated with Aśoka. It is permissible to assume that it was perhaps much like the bodhimaṇḍa as we see it on one of the Bhārhut reliefs¹ bearing the inscription in Brāhmī characters ‘Bhagavato Sakya Munino Bodho.’ The point of architectural interest is that the Bhārhut altar consists of four pilasters the forms of which were evidently derived from wooden prototypes and had nothing to do with the monumental Aśoka columns.
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¹ Coomaraswamy, op. cit., fig. 41
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The Barābar and Nāgārjuni caves of which the Sudāmā seems to be the earliest are lineal descendants of similar rock-hewn caves that must have been in use by peoples of rude primitive tribes and recluses. They are the earliest examples of the rock-cut method, and are exact translations in stone of existing wood and thatch structures. The exterior walls and roofs of these simple cells, including that of the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi cave of the same Barābar-Nāgārjuni series have all received the high polish so typical of Mauryan art. The earliest of these caves is presumably the one bearing an inscription dated in the twelfth year of Aśoka's reign—the Sudāmā—and saying that it was dedicated to the monks of the Ājīvika sect. This rock-hewn cave consists of two chambers; a rectangular antechamber with barrel-vaulted roof and a doorway with sloping jambs—an indication of adoption of wooden prototypes—in the long side of the chamber at the end of which there is a separate circular cell with a hemispherically domed roof. The two chambers are connected by a central interior doorway. At the outer side the circular cell has overhanging eaves which are but transference in wood of thatch construction ; moreover the live rock walls are marked by irregular perpendicular grooves which are but translation on live rock of upright wooden or bamboo planking¹.
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¹ Fergusson, History of Indian & Eastern Architecture, I. pp. 130-31 ; Brown, Indian Architecture : Buddhist & Hindu, pp. 12-13.
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Fergusson states that a second of this series of caves ‘called the Karṇa Chaupār, bears an inscription which records the excavation of the cave in the nineteenth year after the coronation of Aśoka. It is simply a rectangular hall....and except in an arched roof....has no architectural feature of importance. At the right, or west end is a low platform as if for an image....’²
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² Fergusson, op. cit. p. 130.
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In the granite Nāgārjuni hill are three more caves, each bearing an inscription of the Maurya king Daśaratha that purports to dedicate them to the same Ājivika sect. Two of these are very small, consisting of a simple rectangular cell each, each entered from the end, and having a barrel-vaulted roof. The largest is the one known locally as Gopi or Milkmaid's cave which is a long rectangular hall with a barrel-vaulted roof and with circular ends. It is entered through a doorway in the centre of the south side³.
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³ Ibid, p. 132 ; Brown, op. cit. p. 13.
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Chronologically the latest and architecturally the best of the series is undoubtedly the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi⁴ which though bearing no inscription may be taken to belong to the Maurya period. In ground plan and general design it is much like the Sudāmā, and consists similarly of a rectangular antechamber with barrel-vaulted roof entered by the long side through a doorway with sloping jambs ; this antechamber is connected at the end through a central doorway with a separate cell which is oval and not round as in the Sudāmā. But the most interesting architectural element in the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi is its facade which is frankly an exact translation of the gable end of a wooden structure in the language of stone. The carpenter's handiwork has been copied in stone in every little detail. From this facade can easily be reconstructed the wood-built structural *chaityas* of this period¹. The finial that surmounts the gable of the facade also seems to be translated from either terracotta originals or from wooden copies of them.
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⁴ Fergusson, op. cit. p. 131-32 ; Brown, op. cit. p. 13.
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¹ Ibid.
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These caves or rock-cut *chaityas* represent about half-a-century of building activity, but unlike Mauryan sculpture these almost primitive architectural essays show no process of evolution. From the Sudāmā to the Lomaśa Ṛishi there is no doubt an elaboration, but the three caves of Daśaratha do not fit in along the line of any supposed or actual evolution. Indeed these caves do not represent, except in their high polish, any conscious attempts towards architectural achievement. The architects of the Maurya court, so far as these caves are concerned, merely copied in stone what they saw before them constructed of wood and bamboo and clay. But the facade of the Lomaśa Ṛishi proves once for all that even here in these primitive caves there was no slipshod work permitted in the actual cutting of the stone; every little detail is sharply and precisely chiselled. Whatever their architectural quality these rock-cut *chaitya* halls represent the earliest extant remains of and perhaps the second stage in the evolution of this type of Indian monuments. The history of later *chaitya* architecture is roughly the history of the evolution of the ground plan and elevation of the Sudāmā and the Lomaśa Ṛishi.