Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/388

 340 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK. III. interesting in themselves, are not nearly so important for our history as the raths just described. The caves are generally small, and fail architecturally, from the feebleness and tenuity of their supports. The southern cave-diggers had evidently 196. Entrance to a Hindu Ten (From Sir J. E. Tennent's ' Ceylon.') not been grounded in the art, like their northern compeers, by the Buddhists. The long experience of the latter in the art taught them that ponderous masses were not only necessary to support their roofs, but for architectural effect ; and neither they nor the Hindus who succeeded them in the north ever hesitated to use pillars of two or three diameters in height, or to crowd them together to any required extent. In the south, on the contrary, the cave-diggers tried to copy literally the structural pillars used to support wooden roofs. Hence, I believe, the accident to the long rath, and hence certainly the poor and modern look of these southern caves, which has long proved such a stumbling-block to all who have tried to guess their age. Their sculpture is better, and some of their best designs rank with those of Elura and Elephanta, to which they were anterior. The Badami sculptures, executed in the 6th century (A.D. 579), are so similar in style with the best examples in the Mamallapuram caves, that we had con- cluded they could not be far distant in date, and must be placed in the preceding century ; and this has since been supported by the contents of the inscriptions in the Dharmaraja mantapam at the Saluvankuppam cave.