Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/189

 CHAP. V. JUNNAR. 155 seriously in architectural dignity and effect. Historically its chief interest is in showing how idolatrous Buddhism was becoming when Brahmanism was about to expel the former from the country of its birth. JUNNAR. Around the old town of Junnar, about 48 miles north from Poona, are some five separate groups of caves, consisting altogether of fully a hundred and fifty different excavations the majority of them being small. Like other early caves, they are mostly devoid of figure ornament, and notwithstanding ten chapel or chaitya caves, scattered among the different groups, it might perhaps be questioned whether they should all be classed as Buddhist, or whether some of them at least did not belong to the Jains or other sects. Fuller illustration and study of what figure ornament there is must settle this ; but the inscriptions on certain of the caves indicate that they were for followers of certain Buddhist schools. These inscriptions seem to range palaeographically, from about B.C. 100 to A.D. 3OO. 1 There are not, it is true, any chaityas among them so magnifi- cent as that at Karle, nor any probably quite so old as those at Bhaja and Bedsa ; but there is, in the Gane^a group, a chaitya, both in plan and dimensions, very like that at Nasik, and a vihara, quite equal to the finest at that place. The great interest of the series, however, consists in its possessing examples of forms not known elsewhere. 2 There are, for instance, among others, six chaitya caves, with square terminations, flat roofs and with- out internal pillars, and one circular cave which was quite unique until the discovery of another of the same form at Guntupalle, near the east coast. The great peculiarity of the series is the extreme simplicity of the caves composing it. They are too early to have any 1 The Junnar inscriptions have been as to be almost unintelligible; in 1850, translated by Dr. Kern, ' Indian Anti- Dr. Wilson described them in the quary,' vol. vi. pp. 391". ; and by Drs. 'Bombay Journal'; and in 1857 Dr. Bhagwanlal Indraji and Biihler, ' Cave Stevenson republished their inscriptions, Temple Inscriptions,' pp. 41 - 55 ; ' Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. iv. pp. 92-98, and 103. 2 These caves have long been known to antiquarians. In 1833 Colonel Sykes published a series of inscriptions copied from them, but without any description of the caves themselves ('Journal of with translations, in the eighth volume of the same journal ; and Mr. W. F. Sinclair, C.S., wrote a short account of them in the ' Indian Antiquary' vol. iii. pp. 33ff. In November 1874, a hurried survey was made, the results of which are given in ' Cave Temples,' pp. 248-262 and plates 17, 18 ; and in the ' Archseo the Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. iv. pp. logical Survey of Western India,' vol. iv. 287-291). In 1847, Dr. Bird noticed pp. 26-36. Photographs, however, are them in his ' Historical Researches,' needed to make them more clearly in- with some wretched lithographs, so bad | telligible.