DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0188
166 CAVE TEMPLES OF WESTERN INDIA.
western caves afford the most vivid illustration of the rise and
progress of all the three great religions that prevailed in India in
the early centuries of our era and before it. They show clearly how
the Buddhist religion rose and spread, and how its form afterwards
became corrupt and idolatrous. They explain how it consequently
came to be superseded by the nearly cognate form of Jainism and
the antagonistic development of the revived religion of the
Brahmans. All this too is done in a manner more vivid and more
authentic than can be obtained from any other mode of illustration
now available.
"With all these claims to attention it is hardly to be wondered at
that the western caves have attracted the attention of the learned
both in India and in Europe from a very early period of their
connexion with the Bast, and that a detailed statistical account of
them may still be considered as a desideratum, which it is hoped
this work may to some extent at least supply.
It is not easy at first sight to account for the extremely rapid
extension of Cave architecture in the "West of India as compared
with that in the East. Behar was the cradle of the religion that
first adopted this monumental form, not any part of Western
India, while it will probably be admitted the Buddhists were the first
to introduce this form of architecture on both sides of the country.
At the same time there seems no reason for supposing that Buddhism
in any form existed in the West before missionaries were sent there
by Asoka, after the convocation held by him in the seventeenth year of
his reign, as detailed above (ante, p. 17). Before this time there is
certainly no evidence to show that the inhabitants of the Western
Grhats were dwellers in caves or used the rock for any monumental
or religious purpose, but immediately afterwards they seem to have
commenced excavating it and continued to do so uninterruptedly
for a long series of years.
It has been suggested that as the Egyptian rock-cut temples are
principally in Upper Egypt above the Cataract and in Nubia, tna
their comparative proximity to India may have been the cause of wj15
form being adopted there. The distance of date, however, between tie
latest Egyptian and earliest Indian examples quite precludes t is
idea. Besides the fact that no similarity of any detail can be trace^
between them, and there seems no other country which could ha
western caves afford the most vivid illustration of the rise and
progress of all the three great religions that prevailed in India in
the early centuries of our era and before it. They show clearly how
the Buddhist religion rose and spread, and how its form afterwards
became corrupt and idolatrous. They explain how it consequently
came to be superseded by the nearly cognate form of Jainism and
the antagonistic development of the revived religion of the
Brahmans. All this too is done in a manner more vivid and more
authentic than can be obtained from any other mode of illustration
now available.
"With all these claims to attention it is hardly to be wondered at
that the western caves have attracted the attention of the learned
both in India and in Europe from a very early period of their
connexion with the Bast, and that a detailed statistical account of
them may still be considered as a desideratum, which it is hoped
this work may to some extent at least supply.
It is not easy at first sight to account for the extremely rapid
extension of Cave architecture in the "West of India as compared
with that in the East. Behar was the cradle of the religion that
first adopted this monumental form, not any part of Western
India, while it will probably be admitted the Buddhists were the first
to introduce this form of architecture on both sides of the country.
At the same time there seems no reason for supposing that Buddhism
in any form existed in the West before missionaries were sent there
by Asoka, after the convocation held by him in the seventeenth year of
his reign, as detailed above (ante, p. 17). Before this time there is
certainly no evidence to show that the inhabitants of the Western
Grhats were dwellers in caves or used the rock for any monumental
or religious purpose, but immediately afterwards they seem to have
commenced excavating it and continued to do so uninterruptedly
for a long series of years.
It has been suggested that as the Egyptian rock-cut temples are
principally in Upper Egypt above the Cataract and in Nubia, tna
their comparative proximity to India may have been the cause of wj15
form being adopted there. The distance of date, however, between tie
latest Egyptian and earliest Indian examples quite precludes t is
idea. Besides the fact that no similarity of any detail can be trace^
between them, and there seems no other country which could ha