DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0506
484 BRAHMANICAL CAVE-TEMPLES.
dour of the court of the great Vicramaditya of Ujjain, and the learn-
ing of the so-called nine jewels who adorned it. It is not clear that
any overt acts of aggression against the Buddhists were attempted
during his reign (a.d. 520-550 P),1 but at the end of that century we
find the Brahmans (579) excavating caves at Badami, where, however,
there is no evidence of Buddhists having previously existed, so that
this can only be considered as a challenge from afar. In the following
century, however, they boldly enter into competition with them at
Elura, Dharasinwa, and along the whole line wherever they were most
powerful. In the eighth century they signalize their triumph by
excavating such temples as the Kailasa and those at Elephanta and
Jogeswari. In the ninth the struggle is over, and there were no longer
any motives to attempt to rival the Buddhists by excavating temples
in the rock. Brahmanism reigned supreme in the length and breadth
of the land, and when the curtain is again drawn up, after the dark
and impenetrable night that hangs over India during the tenth cen-
tury, there were no longer any Buddhists in the cave regions of the
west, at least. It still lingered in Bengal till the Mahomedan con-
quest, but there are no caves there that throw any light on the mode
in which the second struggle terminated in the final expulsion of the
Buddhists from India. "We have no written record of this momentous
revolution, except of the preliminary grumblings of the coming
storm in the works of the Chinese pilgrim, Hiwen Thsang (a.d. 630
to 644), but the record of the Brahmanical caves, as we are now able
to read it, throws a clear and distinct light on the whole of the events
of the period, which is invaluable to those who know how complete
our ignorance otherwise would be, of the history of these dark age3
in India.
1 Journal Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iv. pp. 81, et seqq. See also paper on the
same subject in the present April number of the same journal, where the origm ol
Saka and Samvat eras is discussed by the light that recent discoveries in Afghanis an
and elsewhere have thrown on the subject.—J. F.
dour of the court of the great Vicramaditya of Ujjain, and the learn-
ing of the so-called nine jewels who adorned it. It is not clear that
any overt acts of aggression against the Buddhists were attempted
during his reign (a.d. 520-550 P),1 but at the end of that century we
find the Brahmans (579) excavating caves at Badami, where, however,
there is no evidence of Buddhists having previously existed, so that
this can only be considered as a challenge from afar. In the following
century, however, they boldly enter into competition with them at
Elura, Dharasinwa, and along the whole line wherever they were most
powerful. In the eighth century they signalize their triumph by
excavating such temples as the Kailasa and those at Elephanta and
Jogeswari. In the ninth the struggle is over, and there were no longer
any motives to attempt to rival the Buddhists by excavating temples
in the rock. Brahmanism reigned supreme in the length and breadth
of the land, and when the curtain is again drawn up, after the dark
and impenetrable night that hangs over India during the tenth cen-
tury, there were no longer any Buddhists in the cave regions of the
west, at least. It still lingered in Bengal till the Mahomedan con-
quest, but there are no caves there that throw any light on the mode
in which the second struggle terminated in the final expulsion of the
Buddhists from India. "We have no written record of this momentous
revolution, except of the preliminary grumblings of the coming
storm in the works of the Chinese pilgrim, Hiwen Thsang (a.d. 630
to 644), but the record of the Brahmanical caves, as we are now able
to read it, throws a clear and distinct light on the whole of the events
of the period, which is invaluable to those who know how complete
our ignorance otherwise would be, of the history of these dark age3
in India.
1 Journal Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iv. pp. 81, et seqq. See also paper on the
same subject in the present April number of the same journal, where the origm ol
Saka and Samvat eras is discussed by the light that recent discoveries in Afghanis an
and elsewhere have thrown on the subject.—J. F.