63. Façade of the Viswakarma Cave at Ellora.
(From a Photograph.)
Owing to the sloping nature of the ground in which it is excavated this cave possesses a forecourt of considerable extent and of great elegance of design, which gives its façade an importance it is not entitled to from any intrinsic merit of its own.
Kenheri.
One of the best known and most frequently described chaityas in India is that on the island of Salsette, in Bombay Harbour, known as the great Kenheri cave. In dimensions it belongs to the first rank, being 88 ft. 6 in. by 39 ft. 10 in., and it has the advantage that its date is now almost absolutely fixed. In the verandah there is an inscription recording that the celebrated Buddhaghosha dedicated one of the middle-sized statues in the porch to the honour of the lord Bhagawan,[150] and in the same porch another inscription records the execution of the great statues of Buddha by “Gotamiputra’s imperial descendant Sri Yadnya Sat Karni.”[151] Now we know that the first-named, Buddhaghosha, went on his mission to Ceylon, B.C. 410,[152] and he is not known ever to have returned to India; and Yadnya Sri has always been assumed to have lived 408-428, generally it must be confessed on the mistaken etymology of confounding his name with that of Yuegai of the Chinese. That, however, is apparently only a translation of the “Moon beloved king,” and more applicable, consequently, to Chandra Sri or Chandragupta, who was his contemporary. The true basis for the determination of his date is the Puranic chronology, which, for this period seems indisputable.[153] Be all this as it may, the conjunction of these two names here in this cave settles their date, and settles also the age of the cave as belonging to the early years of the 5th century, at the time when Fa Hian was travelling in India.
This being so, one would naturally expect that the architecture of the cave should exhibit some stage of progress intermediate between cave(No. [10]and cave No. 19 of Ajunta, but nothing of the sort is apparent here; the Kenheri cave is a literal copy of the great cave at Karli, but in so inferior a style of art that, when I first saw it, I was inclined to ascribe it to an age of Buddhist decrepitude, when the traditions of true art had passed away, and men were trying by spasmodic efforts to revive a dead art. This being now proved not to be the case, the architecture of this cave can only be looked upon as an exceptional anomaly, the principles of whose design are unlike anything else to be found in India, emanating probably from some individual caprice, the origin of which we may probably never now be able to recover.
Internally the roof was ornamented with timber rafters, and though these have fallen away, the wooden pins by which they were fastened to the rock still remain; and the screen in front has all the mortices and other indications, as at Karli, proving that it was intended to be covered with wooden galleries and framework. What is still more curious, the figures of chiefs with their wives, which adorn the front of the screen at Karli, are here repeated literally, but copied so badly as not at first sight to be easily recognisable. This is the more strange as it occurred at an age when their place was reserved for figures of Buddha, and when, at Karli itself, they were cutting away the old sculptures and old inscriptions, to introduce figures of Buddha, either seated cross-legged, or borne on the lotus, supported by Naga figures at its base.[154]
In front of this cave is a dwarf rail which, with the knowledge we now have, would in itself be almost sufficient to settle the age, in spite of these anomalies ([Woodcut No. 64]). Unfortunately it is so weather-worn that it is difficult to make out all its details; but comparing it with the Gautamiputra rail ([Woodcut No. 32]) and the Amravati rail ([Woodcut No. 36]), it will be seen that it contains all those complications that were introduced in the 3rd and 4th centuries, but which were discontinued in the 5th and 6th, when the rail in any shape fell into disuse as an architectural ornament.[155]