This Hall, Or The Central
Temple, Is Very Spacious, Eighty - Four Feet Square, And Sixteen
Feet High.
Twenty-four massive pillars form a square, six pillars
at each side, including the corner ones, and four in
The middle
to prop up the centre of the ceiling; otherwise it could not be
kept from falling, as the mass of the mountain which presses on
it from the top is much greater than in Karli or Elephanta.
There are at least three different styles in the architecture of
these pillars. Some of them are grooved in spirals, gradually
and imperceptibly changing from round to sixteen sided, then
octagonal and square. Others, plain for the first third of their
height, gradually finished under the ceiling by a most elaborate
display of ornamentation, which reminds one of the Corinthian style.
The third with a square plinth and semi-circular friezes. Taking
it all in all, they made a most original and graceful picture.
Mr. Y - -, an architect by profession, assured us that he never
saw anything more striking. He said he could not imagine by the
aid of what instruments the ancient builders could accomplish
such wonders.
The construction of the Bagh caves, as well as of all the cave
temples of India, whose history is lost in the darkness of time,
is ascribed by the European archeologists to the Buddhists, and
by the native tradition to the Pandu brothers. Indian paleography
protests in every one of its new discoveries against the hasty
conclusions of the Orientalists. And much may be said against
the intervention of Buddhists in this particular case. But I shall
indicate only one particular. The theory which declares that all
the cave temples of India are of Buddhist origin is wrong. The
Orientalists may insist as much as they choose on the hypothesis
that the Buddhists became again idol-worshipers; it will explain
nothing, and contradicts the history of both Buddhists and Brahmans.
The Brahmans began persecuting and banishing the Buddhists precisely
because they had begun a crusade against idol-worship. The few
Buddhist communities who remained in India and deserted the pure,
though, maybe - for a shallow observer - somewhat atheistic teachings
of Gautama Siddhartha, never joined Brahmanism, but coalesced with
the Jainas, and gradually became absorbed in them. Then why not
suppose that if, amongst hundreds of Brahmanical gods, we find
one statue of Buddha, it only shows that the masses of half-converts
to Buddhism added this new god to the ancient Brahmanical temple.
This would be much more sensible than to think that the Buddhists
of the two centuries before and after the beginning of the Christian
era dared to fill their temples with idols, in defiance of the
spirit of the reformer Gau-tama. The figures of Buddha are easily
discerned in the swarm of heathen gods; their position is always
the same, and the palm of its right hand is always turned upwards,
blessing the worshipers with two fingers. We examined almost
every remarkable vihara of the so-called Buddhist temples, and
never met with one statue of Buddha which could not have been
added in a later epoch than the construction of the temple; it
does not matter whether it was a year or a thousand years later.
Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took
the opinion of Mr. Y - -, who, as I said before, was an experienced
architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the
Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole,
pillars, decorations, and the general style of the temple; whereas
the statue of Buddha was an additional and discordant patch. Out
of thirty or forty caves of Ellora, all filled with idols, there
is only one, the one called the Temple of the Tri-Lokas, which
contains nothing but statues of Buddha, and of Ananda, his favourite
disciple. Of course, in this case it would be perfectly right
to think it is a Buddhist vihara.
Most probably, some of the Russian archeologists will protest
against the opinions I maintain, that is to say, the opinions of
the Hindu archeologists, and will treat me as an ignoramus,
outraging science. In self-defence, and in order to show how
unstable a ground to base one's opinions upon are the conclusions
even of such a great authority as Mr. Fergusson, I must mention
the following instance. This great architect, but very mediocre
archeologist, proclaimed at the very beginning of his scientific
career that "all the cave temples of Kanara, without exception,
were built between the fifth and the tenth centuries." This theory
became generally accepted, when suddenly Dr. Bird found a brass
plate in a certain Kanara monument, called a tope. The plate
announced in pure and distinct Sanskrit that this tope was erected
as a homage to the old temple, at the beginning of 245 of the
Hindu astronomical (Samvat) era. According to Prinsep and Dr.
Stevenson, this date coincides with 189 A.D., and so it clearly
settles the question of when the tope was built. But the question
of the antiquity of the temple itself still remains open, though
the inscription states that it was an old temple in 189 A.D., and
contradicts the above-quoted opinion of Fergusson. However, this
important discovery failed to shake Fergusson's equanimity. For
him, ancient inscriptions are of no importance, because, as he says,
"the antiquity of ruins must not be fixed on the basis of inscriptions,
but on the basis of certain architectural canons and rules,"
discovered by Mr. Fergusson in person. Fiat hypothesis, ruat coelum!
And now I shall return to my narrative.
Straight before the entrance a door leads to another hall, which
is oblong, with hexagonal pillars and niches, containing statues
in a tolerable state of preservation; goddesses ten feet and gods
nine feet high. After this hall there is a room with an altar,
which is a regular hexagon, having sides each three feet long,
and protected by a cupola cut in the rock.
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