43. Façade of Lomas Rishi Cave.
(From a Photograph by Mr. Peppe, C.E.)
The interior, as will be seen from the annexed plan (No. [44]), is quite plain in form, and does not seem to have been ever quite completed. It consists of a hall 33 ft. by 19 ft., beyond which is an apartment of nearly circular form, evidently meant to represent a tope or dagoba, but at that early age the architects had not quite found out how to accomplish this in a rock-cut structure.
44. Lomas Rishi Cave.
Judging from the inscriptions on these caves, the whole were excavated between the date of the Nigope and that of the Milkmaid’s Cave, so called (which was excavated by Dasaratha, the grandson of Asoka), probably within fifty years of that date. They appear to range, therefore, from 260 to 200 B.C., and the Lomas Rishi is probably the most modern[140]—it certainly is the most richly ornamented. No great amount of elaboration, however, is found in these examples, inasmuch as the material in which they are excavated is the hardest and most close-grained granite; and it was hardly to be expected that a people who so recently had been using nothing but wood as a building material would have patience sufficient for labours like these. They have polished them like glass in the interior, and with that they have been content.
Western Chaitya Halls.
45. Chaitya Cave, Bhaja.
(From a Plan by Mr. Burgess.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.