History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c16.s3.33

c16.s3.33

The fourth cave of the Barābar group (Plate VII, iii) contains no Aśokan inscription. This is the Lomas Ṛṣi, the structure and dimensions of which are very similar to those of the Sudāma cave. The outer chamber is polished, but the inner chamber is rough-hewn. Cunningham suggests that the work was abandoned on reaching a deep fissure, which forms one of the natural lines of cleavage of the rock. The similarity of interior workmanship and design convinced Cunningham that the Sudāma and Lomas Ṛṣi caves had been excavated at the same time and for the same religious purpose, and that an Aśokan inscription originally existed in the porch, and was removed when the latter was enlarged.³ The carved porch of the Lomas Ṛṣi cave is its most outstanding feature. This highly finished entrance, with its frieze of elephants, was thought by Cunningham to have been constructed in the Gupta period, since an epigraph of Anantavarman Maukhari is to be found inscribed above it. This view was supported by Fleet,⁴ but few would now subscribe to it. The arch is carved in slavish imitation of timber construction, and this, and other details of its workmanship and design, indicate a much earlier date.⁵ Fergusson recognized that the façade was of approximately the same period as the cave itself.⁶ The row of elephants above the entrance emerges from two crocodile-like *makaras* at either side, and appears to be worshipping three *caityas*. Whether these elephants are specifically Ājīvika symbols cannot be decided with certainty. The "Last Sprinkling Elephant" was one of the eight finalities (*carimāim*) of the Ājīvikas,¹ and King Harṣa of Kashmir, who may have been a patron of the sect, introduced an elephant motif on his coins²; but these feeble indications are very inconclusive. From the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* it would seem that the Ājīvikas, like their rivals, respected *caityas*,³ which were probably sacred sites in pre-Āryan times. It is not therefore impossible that the façade of the Lomas Ṛṣi cave was added by a later patron of the Ājīvikas, not long after the death of Aśoka.