The Most Interesting, As Being The Most Perfect, Specimen, Is The
Small Rock Temple, Which, Being Hewn Out Of The Solid Stone, Is
Still In Complete Preservation.
This is a small chamber in the
face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural
cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and
the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has
been shaped into an arched doorway.
The interior is not more
than perhaps twenty-five feet by eighteen, and is simply fitted
up with an altar and the three figures of Buddha, in the
positions in which he is usually represented -the sitting, the
reclining and the standing postures.
The exterior of the temple is far more interesting. The narrow
archway is flanked on either side by two inclined planes, hewn
from the face of the rock, about eighteen feet high by twelve in
width. These are completely covered with an inscription in the
old Pali language, which has never been translated. Upon the
left of one plain is a kind of sunken area hewn out of the rock,
in which sits a colossal figure of Buddha, about twenty feet in
height. On the right of the other plane is a figure in the
standing posture about the same height; and still farther to the
right, likewise hewn from the solid rock, is an immense figure in
the recumbent posture, which is about fifty-six feet in length,
or, as I measured it, not quite nineteen paces.
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