In The Chief Of Them Stand Three
Statues Of Buddha; In The Lateral Ones A Lingam And Two Jaina Idols.
In the top cave there is a statue of Dharma Raja, or Yudhshtira,
the eldest of the Pandus, who is
Worshipped in a temple erected
in his honor, between Pent and Nassik. Farther on is a whole
labyrinth of cells, where Buddhist hermits probably lived, a huge
statue of Buddha in a reclining posture. and another as big, but
surrounded with pillars adorned with figures of various animals.
Styles, epochs and sects are here as much mixed up and entangled
as different trees in a thick forest.
It is very remarkable that almost all the cave temples of India
are to be found inside conical rocks and mountains. It is as
though the ancient builders looked for such natural pyramids
purposely. I noticed this peculiarity in Karli, and it is to be
met with only in India. Is it a mere coincidence, or is it one
of the rules of the religious architecture of the remote past?
And which are the imitators - the builders of the Egyptian pyramids,
or the unknown architects of the under ground caves of India? In
pyramids as well as in caves everything seems to be calculated with
geometrical exactitude. In neither case are the entrances ever at
the bottom, but always at a certain distance from the ground. It
is well known that nature does not imitate art, and, as a rule,
art tries to copy certain forms of nature.
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