DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0056
ARCHITECTURE. 35
doubt to an Assyrian origin, and fifty other things tend in the same
direction with more or less distinctness. This is not the place,
however, to insist upon them, as they have very little direct bearing
on the subject of this work. It is well, however, to indicate their
existence, as Assyrian architecture, in the form in which it is
found copied in stone at Persepolis, is the only style to which we
can look for any suggestions to explain the origin of many forms
and details found in the western caves, as well as in the Gandhara
monasteries.
When the various points hinted at above are fairly grasped, they
add immensely to the interest of the caves to be described in the
following pages. More than this, however, as the Buddhists were
beyond doubt the earliest cave excavators in India, and the only
ones for more than a thousand years after the death of the founder
of that religion, these rock-cut temples form the only connecting
link between the Nirvana and the earliest Buddhist scriptures which
have reached our times, in their present form.1 Whether looked on
from an ethnological, a historical, or a religious point of view, the
Buddhist caves, with their contemporary sculpture and paintings,
became not only the most vivid and authentic, but almost the only
authentic record of the same age, of that form of faith from its
origin to its decline and decay in India. If it is also true—which
we have at present no reason for doubting—that the Buddhists
were the first to use any permanent materials for building and
sculptural purposes in the caves, combined with the few fragments
of structural buildings that remain, they have left a record which is
quite unique in India. It is, however, a representation which for
vividness and completeness can hardly be surpassed by any lithic
record in any other country, of their feelings and aspirations during
the whole period of their existence.
Although the Brahmanical and Jaina caves, which succeeded the
Buddhist, on the decline of that religion in the sixth and subsequent
centuries, are full of interest, and sometimes rival and even surpass
them in magnificence, they have neither their originality nor their
truthfulness. They are either inappropriate imitations of the caves
of the Buddhists, or copies of their own structural temples, whose
1 The Mahawanso and other Ceylonese scriptures were reduced to the present form
by Buddhaghosa in the beginning of the oth century a.d. It was then, too, that
Fa Hian, the earliest Chinese pilgrim, travelled in India.
C 2
doubt to an Assyrian origin, and fifty other things tend in the same
direction with more or less distinctness. This is not the place,
however, to insist upon them, as they have very little direct bearing
on the subject of this work. It is well, however, to indicate their
existence, as Assyrian architecture, in the form in which it is
found copied in stone at Persepolis, is the only style to which we
can look for any suggestions to explain the origin of many forms
and details found in the western caves, as well as in the Gandhara
monasteries.
When the various points hinted at above are fairly grasped, they
add immensely to the interest of the caves to be described in the
following pages. More than this, however, as the Buddhists were
beyond doubt the earliest cave excavators in India, and the only
ones for more than a thousand years after the death of the founder
of that religion, these rock-cut temples form the only connecting
link between the Nirvana and the earliest Buddhist scriptures which
have reached our times, in their present form.1 Whether looked on
from an ethnological, a historical, or a religious point of view, the
Buddhist caves, with their contemporary sculpture and paintings,
became not only the most vivid and authentic, but almost the only
authentic record of the same age, of that form of faith from its
origin to its decline and decay in India. If it is also true—which
we have at present no reason for doubting—that the Buddhists
were the first to use any permanent materials for building and
sculptural purposes in the caves, combined with the few fragments
of structural buildings that remain, they have left a record which is
quite unique in India. It is, however, a representation which for
vividness and completeness can hardly be surpassed by any lithic
record in any other country, of their feelings and aspirations during
the whole period of their existence.
Although the Brahmanical and Jaina caves, which succeeded the
Buddhist, on the decline of that religion in the sixth and subsequent
centuries, are full of interest, and sometimes rival and even surpass
them in magnificence, they have neither their originality nor their
truthfulness. They are either inappropriate imitations of the caves
of the Buddhists, or copies of their own structural temples, whose
1 The Mahawanso and other Ceylonese scriptures were reduced to the present form
by Buddhaghosa in the beginning of the oth century a.d. It was then, too, that
Fa Hian, the earliest Chinese pilgrim, travelled in India.
C 2