A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c21.6

c21.6

There are eight *caitya* halls of the second and first century B.C. and in their probable order of execution they are ‘Bhāja, Kondane, Pitālkhora, Ajanta (No. 10), Bedsa, Ajanta (No. 9), Nasik and Karle’, the first four belonging to the second century and the remainder to the first. Two *caitya* halls at Junnar are ‘of the same type and date as that at Nasik’. The series may be said to close with the *caitya* at Kanheri (second century A.D.). In the earlier examples the pillars of the colonnades are copies of plain wooden posts, with an octagonal section and without capital or base, and they generally slope towards the interior; in later examples the inward slant disappears and the columns become more elaborate, with bases and capitals, and evolve into an ‘order’. The horseshoe archway above the entrance which dominates the façade also undergoes a corresponding evolution. Bedsa and Karle are the finest examples of this early *caityas*, and the façade as well as the column is marked by many innovations. At Bedsa the base of the column is vase-shaped and its capital is surmounted by a group of figures and animals ‘each of which consists of a male and female figure lightly clad but with heavy ornaments seated astride kneeling animals, on the one side horses, and on the other elephants. These groups are exceptionally vivid and spirited examples of rock sculpture, evidently the work of a master craftsman in this medium.’ The hall is 45½ feet long and 21 feet wide. Karle (Pl. I), the largest and best of the series, is 124 feet long, 46½ feet wide and 45 feet high. Here the façade consists of two stages, the lower wall pierced by three doorways and an upper gallery over which rises the enormous horseshoe window. The pillars of the colonnade have capitals more elaborate than at Bedsa, and they have the effect of a frieze and cornice. From them rise the wooden ribs attached to the domed stone of the roof. The spaces between the doorways in the lower stage of the façade are each decorated with sculptures of two human figures, very massive and grandly executed. ‘The setting back of the entrance into the face of the rock forms an outer porch, the sides of which are sculptured in architectural façades of several storeys, the lowest supported by huge elephants, the second decorated with sculptured figures’ like those of the lower stage of the façade. The entrance was preceded by a wooden antechamber or porch, and farther outside stands one of the two original monolithic *dhvajastambhas* with a capital of four lions which once supported a wheel. The arrangements carefully designed to deflect the glaring sunshine streaming through the horseshoe window of the façade have received high praise from Percy Brown who observes: ‘There are few lighting effects more solemnly beautiful than the soft luminous atmosphere diffused in this manner through the sun-window at Karle’. The *caitya* at Kanheri is ‘a decadent copy of that at Karle, but only about two-thirds its size’.