The whole of the caves in this group resemble one another so much in detail and execution that it is difficult to make out any succession among them, and it is probable that they were all excavated within the same century as the Viswakarma.
The next three temples are particularly interesting to the antiquarian, as pointing out the successive steps by which the Buddhistical caves merged into the Brahmanical.
The first is the Do Tal, or Dookya Ghur, a Buddhist vihara of two storeys; most of its details are so similar to those above described that it may be assumed to be, without doubt, of the same age. It is strictly Buddhistic in all its details, and shows no more tendency towards Brahmanism than what was pointed out in speaking of the Viswakarma. It apparently was intended to have had three storeys, but has been left unfinished.
The next, or Teen Tal, is very similar to the last in arrangement and detail, and its sculptures are all Buddhistical, though deviating so far from the usual simplicity of that style as almost to justify the Brahmans in appropriating them as they have done.
The third, the Das Avatar, is another two-storeyed cave, very similar in all its architectural details to the two preceding, but the sculptures are all Brahmanical. At first sight, it seems as if the excavation had been made by the Buddhists, and appropriated and finished by their successors. This may be true to a certain extent, but on a more careful examination it appears more probable that we owe it entirely to the Brahmans. It is evidently the earliest Brahmanical temple here, and it is natural to suppose that when the Saivites first attempted to rival their antagonists in cave-temples they should follow the only models that existed, merely appropriating them to their own worship. The circumstance, however, that makes this most probable, is the existence of a pseudo-structural mantapa, or shrine of Nundi, in the courtyard; this evidently must have been a part of the original design, or the rock would not have been left here for it, and it is a model of the usual structural building found in Saiva temples in different parts of India. This is a piece of bad grammar the Buddhists never were guilty of; their excavations always are caves, whilst the great characteristic of Brahmanical excavations, as distinguished from that of their predecessors, is that they generally copied structural buildings: a system that rose to its greatest height in the Kylas, to be described further on. The Buddhist excavations, on the contrary, were always caves and nothing else.
It is not easy, in the present state of our knowledge, to determine whether the Ellora Buddhist group is later or earlier than those of Dhumnar and Kholvi. It is certainly finer than either, and conforms more closely with the traditions of the style in its palmiest days; but that may be owing to local circumstances, of which we have no precise knowledge. The manner, however, in which it fades into the Hindu group is in itself sufficient to prove how late it is. If we take A.D. 600 as the medium date for the Viswakarma and its surroundings, and A.D. 750 as a time when the last trace of Buddhism had disappeared from western India, we shall probably not err to any great extent; but we must wait for some inscriptions or more precise data before attempting to speak with precision on the subject.
A great deal more requires to be done before this great cartoon can be filled up with anything like completeness; but in the meanwhile it is satisfactory to know that in these “rock-cut temples,” eked out by the few structural examples that exist, we have a complete history of the arts and liturgies of the Buddhists for the thousand years that ranged from B.C. 250 to A.D. 750; and that, when any one with zeal and intelligence enough for the purpose will devote himself to the task, he will be able to give us a more vivid and far more authentic account of this remarkable form of faith than can be gathered from any books whose existence is now known to us.
Junir.
When the history of the cave-temples of western India comes to be written in anything like a complete and exhaustive manner, the groups situated near and around the town of Junir, about half-way between Nassick and Poonah, will occupy a prominent position in the series. There are not, it is true, in this locality any chaityas so magnificent as that at Karli, nor any probably so old as those at Bhaja and Bedsa; but there is one chaitya, both in plan and dimensions, very like that at Nassick and probably of the same age, and one vihara, at least, quite equal to the finest at that place. The great interest of the series, however, consists in its possessing examples of forms not known elsewhere. There are, for instance, certainly two, probably three, chaitya caves, with square terminations and without internal pillars, and one circular cave which is quite unique so far as we at present know.
These caves have long been known to antiquarians. In 1833 Colonel Sykes published a series of inscriptions copied from them, but without any description of the caves themselves.[201] In 1847, Dr. Bird noticed them in his ‘Historical Researches,’ with some wretched lithographs, so bad as to be almost unintelligible; in 1850, Dr. Wilson described them in the ‘Bombay Journal;’ and in 1857 Dr. Stevenson republished their inscriptions, with translations, in the eighth volume of the same journal; and lastly Mr. Sinclair of the Bombay Civil Service, wrote an account of them in the ‘Indian Antiquary’ for February, 1874. Notwithstanding all this, we are still without drawings or photographs which would enable us to understand their peculiarities. The late Dr. Bhau Daji had a set of negatives taken, but never would allow any prints to be made from them; and, when Mr. Burgess visited the caves last autumn, he did not take a photographic apparatus with him, as he depended on obtaining, through Government, the use of Dr. Bhau Daji’s negatives. This has not yet been effected, and till it is this series is hardly available for the purposes of our history, yet it can hardly be passed over in silence.