Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/45

Rh separable from life; secondly, that desire—the thirst for pleasures, being, and power—is the cause of suffering; thirdly, that suffering can be suppressed; fourthly, that the Eightfold Path is the way which leads to the extinction of suffering. While, therefore, the stūpa which contained the holy relics, or symbols, had to be built strongly and well, it was not until later times that the artist and craftsman, as such, were admitted into the Order of monkhood.

Even during Asoka's reign the craftsmanship of the chapter-house which contained the stūpa, and the stūpa itself, was studiously primitive, reflecting the strict asceticism of the Buddha's original doctrine. In the rock-cut monasteries at Ajantā, where there is a progressive series illustrating the development of Buddhist art from about the second century to the seventh century or later, the early ones are oriented towards the north, instead of towards the rising or setting sun, the columns are plain, without caps or bases; and the law of the Buddha, which limited the decoration of monasteries to designs of "wreaths and creepers, and bone-hooks and cupboards," and forbade "imaginative drawings, painted in figures of men and women," was strictly observed.

At Bhājā, a place in the Western Ghāts of the Bombay presidency, not far from the great Kārlē chaītya house, there is a series of monolithic stūpas carved out of a scarp of rock which also contains an early Buddhist rock-cut monastery. The stūpas are inscribed with the names of the Theras, or Brethren, to whom they were dedicated, probably the abbots of the monastery.

They closely resemble the representations of stūpas carved upon the gateways of Sānchī. Though later