Fergusson, James; Burgess, James: The cave temples of India (London, 1880)

KATHTAWAR CAVES. 193

Although the Buddhist caves in this province are among the most
ancient to be found in India, as well as the most numerous, they are
far from possessing the same interest that attaches to many of the
other groups found elsewhere. There is not among the 140 caves
in this district one single Chaitya cave that can for one instant
be compared with the great caves of this class that exist on the
other side of the Grulph of Oambay. There are numerous cells, which
may he called chapels, 15 to 20 feet in depth, containing Dagobas,
but in most cases without internal pillars or ornament of any sort.1
The Viharas, too, are generally either single cells or small groups of
cells, with a pillared verandah, but seldom, if ever, surrounding a
hall, or forming any important architectural combination. Some-
times, indeed, its excavations are expanded into halls of consider-
able dimensions, 50 or 60 feet square, but then generally without
cells or pillars. They seem, in fact, to have been plain meeting
houses or dharmasalas, and such ornament as exists in them is of
the plainest kind, and what sculpture is found upon them, of the
rudest and most conventional kind.

This marked difference between two groups of monuments situated
so near one another, and devoted to the same purpose, must evidently
have arisen from some ethnographic or other local peculiarity dis-
tinguishing the people who excavated them. There seems no reason
for believing that any form of Buddhism existed in the province
before Asoka's missionaries were sent here to convert the people
immediately after the convention held by him, B.C. 246. If they
were the same people we might expect they would adopt the same
richly sculptured forms we found in Orissa, or the same architectural
grandeur which was displayed in the same age in the Sakyadri
whats. No contrast, however, can be greater than that which exists
between the caves at Udyagiri, described above (pp. 69 to 94), and
these Kathiwar caves. Though their dimensions and mode of group-
lng are nearly the same, and their age is nearly as possible identical,
the eastern group is profusely adorned with sculpture, and everywhere
afreets ornament of an elaborate character, and in a style quite up

0 the mark of its age. All this is as unlike as possible to what is

a he cave at Junagarh, marked F on Plate II., can hardly be said to be an exeep-
>°n, though its dimensions are 20 feet by 26. It has no dagoba, and it is not clear if

« ever had. J

V 132.

N