Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/182

 148 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. as there are no openings in the walls, the view between the pillars is practically unlimited. These peculiarities are found more or less developed in all the other caves of the same class in India, varying only with the age and the gradual change that took place from the more purely wooden forms of these caves to the lithic or stone architecture of the more modern ones. This is the principal test by which their relative ages can be determined, and it proves incontestably that the Karle cave was excavated not so very long after stone came to be generally used as a building material in India. There are caves at AjantS. and probably at Junnar which are as old as those just described, and supply details that are wanting in the examples just mentioned. 1 Meanwhile, how- ever, their forms are sufficient to place the history on a firm basis, and to explain the origin and early progress of the style with sufficient distinctness. From the inscriptions and literary evidence, it seems hardly doubtful that the date of the Karle cave is about B.C. 80, and that at Nasik about B.C. 150. We have no literary authority for the date of the two earlier ones, but the archaeological evidence appears irresistible. The Bhaja and Kondane caves are so absolutely identical in style with the Lomas Rishi cave in Bihar (Woodcut No. 55) that they must be of very nearly the same age. Their pillars and their doorways slope so nearly at the same angle, and the essential woodenness if the expression may be used of each is so exactly the same, that, the one being of the age of Ajoka, the others cannot be far removed from the date of his reign. The Bedsa cave exhibits a degree of progress so nearly half-way between the Bhaja and Nasik examples, that it may be dated about B.C. 120. The Pitalkhora cave must also range about the same age, and the whole six, with one or two to be described at Ajanta, thus exhibit the progress of the style during nearly two centuries, and form a basis from which we may proceed to reason with little hesitation or doubt. AJANTA. There are four chaitya caves in the Ajanta series which, though not so magnificent as some of the four just mentioned, are nearly as important for the purposes of our history. 2 The oldest there is the chaitya, No. 10, which is situated very near 1 A much fuller account of the Rock- 2 For further particulars regarding the Temples of India will be found in ' The j Ajanta caves, the reader is referred to Cave - Temples of India,' 1880, and 'Cave Temples,' pp. 280-346, and ' Archaeological Survey of Western ' Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vols. iv. and v. India,' vol. iv. pp. 43-59.