The solitude, the quiet stillness of the spot, with the bright morning sun flooding hill and plain and penetrating the depths of these excavations, were impressive. The temple before us was a large open court and deep vaulted chamber, massive and elaborately carved, and chiselled from the heart of the mountain itself, and rising up nearly a hundred feet. There were many other temples in the hillside, with doorways, arches, pillars, windows, galleries, and verandahs, supported by solid stone pillars filled with figures of gods and goddesses, heroes, giants, birds, beasts, and reptiles of every shape—quite enough to baffle the most careful student in anything like a thorough examination of their vast and intricate workmanship.
We went in and out, climbing stone-cut steps up, down, and round about the caves, not knowing which temple to admire most or on which to bestow undivided attention. It would take weeks to explore them thoroughly. There is a very fine cavern-temple dedicated to Pur Sawanath, "the Lord of Purity," the twenty-third of the great saints of the Jains of this era.[77] An image resembling those that are seen of Buddha, stone tigers, and elephants bear up the altar on which he is seated; from the middle of the altar there projects a curious wheel on which is carved the Hindoo astronomical table, and a seven-headed serpent is seen over the head of the god.
Another very beautiful excavation, consisting of three temples or compartments, is dedicated to Jaggar-Nath Buddh, or "the Enlightened Lord of the Universe;" these temples are best known, however, by the name of Indra Sabha, or "the assembly of Indra." These caves are two-storied, containing images of Indra—"the darter of the swift blue bolt," as he is called—seated on a royal elephant, with his attendants about him, and of Indranee, his wife, riding on a couchant lion, with her son in her arms and her maids around her. The sacred trees of the Hindoos—Kalpa Vriksha, the tree of the ages or of life—are growing out of their heads; on the one overshadowing Indra are carved peacocks, emblematic of royalty, and fruits resembling the rose-apple, sacred to love, grow on the one sprouting from the head of Indranee. This temple is unrivalled for its beauty of form and sculpture.
The next temple we visited was the Dho Máhal Lenah, "the double palace." It is full of figures and sculptured story celebrating the marriage of the god Siva with Parvatee. It is an excavation of great depth and extent, filled with countless gods and goddesses, among which the figure of Yama, the judge of the dead, commonly called Dhannah, is especially remarkable. Not far from this cavern-temple a lovely mountain-torrent comes leaping down in beautiful cascades. Near a wide pool is a rude cave with a deity in it called Dàvee, who draws multitudes of pilgrims to her shrine yearly because of her reputation for performing miracles.
There is also a temple famous in Indian song and story called Khailahsah, or "highest heaven." The mountain has been penetrated to a great depth and height to make room for this wondrous bit of sculpture. Within an area stands a pagoda almost, if not quite, a hundred feet high. It is entered by a noble portico guarded by huge stone figures of men; towering above it are, cut out of the hill, a music-gallery of the finest workmanship and five large chapels, and above all there is in front a spacious court terminating in three magnificent colonnades: huge columns uphold the music-gallery; stone elephants, looking toward us, heave themselves out of this mass of rock-work, and right in front is a grand figure of the Hindoo goddess Lakshimi being crowned queen of heaven by stone elephants, that have raised themselves on their hind feet to pour water over her head from stone vessels grasped in their trunks.
Everywhere we found fresh objects of wonder, and each new cave seemed the greatest marvel of all. The entire hillside is perforated with chatiyas, monasteries, pagodas, towers, spires, obelisks, galleries, and verandahs, all cut out of the solid rock.[78] Nothing could be wilder and more fantastic than the effect produced by these excavations, situated as they are amid natural scenes very wild and romantic—waterfalls, ravines, gorges, old gnarled forest trees, and a dense undergrowth of brushwood.
Naturally, freely, unexpectedly, as the tree grows, was the development of early Hindoo art. Everywhere one sees an unrestrained imagination breaking through and overleaping the bounds of judgment, reason, and even that intuitive sense of refinement to which the Hindoo mind is by no means a stranger.
Our journey next was quite an adventurous one. We started straight across the high plain of the Deccan for the Thull Ghauts. In some parts the country is sandy and desolate, and in others well cultivated, but in no way remarkable till we reached the rugged but grandly mountainous country through which our road lay, circuitous and difficult, but wild and beautiful, as far as Nashik, or "the City of the Nose," sacred to the Hindoos for various local traditions, but above all as being the spot whence the Godaveri takes its rise. The real source of this famous river, however, is some eighteen or twenty miles distant, at Thrimbâk. On our road lay a deep and dangerous nullah or creek, which we forded with much difficulty, assisted by a number of natives whom we were obliged to hire from a little village lying half a mile from its banks. Passing this, we saw the Ghauts for the first time, with their fine forests, and here and there a mountain-stream, not yet dried up by the hot summer sun, tumbling down the mountain-sides or flowing over pebbly beds, sometimes gleaming into the sunlight and sometimes hidden in verdure, and anon lying in deep eddying pools at the foot of the Ghauts, that rise up grand and defiant on every side.
With their forests of foliage and rich jungles the Thull Ghauts are a perpetual wonder and mystery to the natives, and the spot on which the handsome city of Nashik stands is a paradise to the Brahmans. Through it the Godaveri, sometimes called the Gunga, flows, spreading gladness and plenty everywhere. Here it was that Rama, with his beautiful wife Sita, spent the first days of their exile near a dark and dreadful forest, out of which issued the beautiful deer in pursuit of which he was obliged to leave Sita, who became an easy prey to his enemy Rawana. Here Lakshman, the brother of Rama, cut off the nose of the giantess Sarp Naki, the snake-nosed sister of Rawana, from which event the city itself is named.
There is doubtless an historical basis to all these local traditions, for Nashik is a place of great antiquity, and is mentioned by Ptolemy by the name which it bears to-day. This land was no doubt at one time debatable ground between the advancing Aryan tribes and the aboriginal settlers. Here the Buddhists took refuge from the persecutions of the orthodox Brahmans, excavating the temples and caves that abound in this region.