Page:The Rock-cut Temples of India.djvu/247



HE unfinished interior of this Cave and the next one (No. 24) are interesting as showing the whole process by which these Caves were excavated. In one place, what was to be a range of pillars is a wall rock roughly blocked out with a pick. In another it is pierced with what look like a series of rude doorways. In some places the pillars are shaped, in others the carving is finished. On the whole, it appears that it is the last process that has taken the greatest amount of time and labour. The blocking out of a Cave in such a material as amygdaloidal trap is probably not a more expensive process than building such a structure on the plain might prove. If this be so, the durability of a rock-cut structure is such that it might have been far more generally adopted were it not that the situation where they are necessarily placed is often inconvenient, and the power of lighting them frequently insufficient. 55