A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c21.33

c21.33

Contemporary with these monasteries in the Western Ghats, another group—not Buddhist but Jaina—was excavated near Cuttack in Orissa. These rock-cut chambers are all located in two hills known as Khaṇḍagiri and Udayagiri, and were made within the century and a half preceding the Christian era. There are in all some thirty-five excavations but only half the number are at all important, only one of these being on Khaṇḍagiri. There was apparently no regular plan and they were cut in convenient places and connected by paths. The workmanship is clumsy and crude, but that was perhaps at least in part due to the rough texture of the sandstone. Locally, these monasteries are known as *gumphas*, and each is distinguished by some prefix, like Hāthi (elephant). There are many unidentified sculptured scenes from Jaina legends in the more important *gumphas*. The style of the sculptures is at once original and vigorous. The Rāni and Gaṇeśa *gumphas* are both two-storeyed; and the courtyard of the Rāni, there is good reason to think, constituted an open-air theatre. In it are the remains of channels for the distribution of water throughout the structure. In the Gaṇeśa *gumpha* the entrance steps are flanked with figures of elephants, the first appearance of the sculptured-animal motif at the entrance to a rock-cut hall which was developed with such wonderful effect later at Ellora and Elephanta (where, however, the elephants are replaced by lions).