Rock-Cut Cave-Temples-Layanas (Buddhist)
Side by side with the predominantly brick-and-timber architecture of early times, there arose a movement at the time of Asoka which resulted in a series of temples and other religious resorts being excavated into living rock. Being made of more permanent material, these have survived to the present day. Since they are faithful imitations of the contemporary brick-and-timber structures which served as their models, they reproduced, at least in their frontal and interior aspects, all the archiectural details of the period, thus enabling us to form an idea of what the fronts and interiors of contemporary temples and places of what are called layanas into rock and creating partial or total imitations of structural examples, cannot be called architecture, which essentially implies construction by building up of components. They can only be regarded as sculpture on a large scale, more conveniently designated as ‘rock architecture’, or ‘architectural sculpture’. The phase of rock architecture extended approximately over a period of more than a thousand years from the time of Asoka, and is found scattered over different parts of India, the latest of them belonging to the close of the tenth century.
The earliest caves excavated by Asoka and his grandson Dasaratha in the very hard local rock (quartzose-gneiss) are in the Barabar and Nagarjuni hills near Gays. They were dedicated to the Ajivikas. The most important examples of this group are the Sudama (Nyagrodha) and the Lomas Rishi caves. These two caves exactly reproduce the plan of the Suddhamma Deva Sabha in the Barhut relief. This series of caves indicates that the simplest form of such temples consisted of a circular cell or shrine alone, as at Guntupalle.,the porch, or mandapa was added later to accommodate worshipper. This mode of rock architecture shifted in the century mainly to the softer trap formations of the hills of western India or western Deccan where, between 200 BC and AD 200, a number of Buddhist excavations were made. They include chaitya halls, which were really temples or places of worship, the object of worship being a stupa representing the Buddha, and uiharas, or monasteries, each with a number of cells opning into a large central assembly-hall. Such examples are found in the vicinity of Poona and Nasik, and Ajanta and Aurangabad. The choice of this area was due to the fact that the hard granites or gneisses, as in Gaya. Such places of worship wre also excavated into the softer rocks on the Eastern Ghats, lying in the northern coastal districts of Andhra and the southern districts of Orissa, as in Guntupalle and Sankaram, both cut-in and cut-out, the examples in Orissa being the Jain caves of Khandagiri and Udayagiri. Among these the Buddhist cave at Kondivte in Salsette, the Tulaja cave in Junnar, near Poona, and the cave in Guntupalle in Andhra bear comparison with the Sudama and Lomas Rishi caves near Gaya.
Beyond the Bomaby-Poona region, where the soft trap-rock formations were exploited for excavation of chaityas and uiharass, further north and north-west, the laterite hills as in Junagad, afforded the venue for such excavations. Laterite when freshly exposed being equally soft and tractable. Futher south, beyond Konkan, in the Kerala area, west of the ghats, again abounding in laterite, it was excavated into though as cave-tombs of megalithic association in corresponding times.
The rock-cut chaitya at Guntupalle is not far removed from the Gaya caves in point of time. It is a stone version of a circular hut with a cupola-like domed roof of thatch or sheet metal resting on a wooden frame-work resembling an inverted basket, and enshrining a monolithic stupa as the object of worship in the centre, circumambulatory passage all round, and a porch in front of its doorway. The porch framing the entrance shows similar imitation of timberwork in stone, including the torana arch above the lintel.
The Buddhist cave-temple in Kondivte is of similar design where the circular shrine or garbha-griha is occupied by a solid stupa leaving only a narrow circumambulatory passage or pradakshina all round within the shrine and occupying the end of a rectangular hall or mandapa, with a flat roof as the shrine itself. The Tulaja cave in Jujjar is also an excavation after the model of a circular chaitya. The main roofing dome rests on a ring of twelve plain octagonal pillars, instead of on a circular wall-as in the other examples-enclosing a central stupa, both surrounded by a circular aisle, or pradakshina, which is half-domed’. The circular garbha-griha of the Suddhamma Deva Sabha in Barhut is a bas-relief representation of the same model.
The other chaityas are mainly apsidal in plan, consisting of a long rectangular hall like a nave, terminating at the farther end into an apse with often two narrower aisles on either side, each separated from the nave by a row of pillars and extended round the apse as a circumambulatory passage round a stupa, also hewn out of rock and occupying the centre of the apse. The doorwayin front is a huge threshold with an arched window on top. In front of the façade of the hall, a transverse after which such excavations were made were, therefore, essentially apsidal temples. Such an apsidal or chapa form resulted perhaps from the coming together of a circular shrine and rectangular assembly-hall, which were originally distinct from each other as in the examples already described.
At Ajanta, in the Decan, out of the thirty excavations, six consisting of two chaitya halls (Nos. 9 and 10), and four uiharas (Nos. 8,12,13, and 30), belong to the early group, and are of the same type as some Buddhist excavations at Bhaja, Karle, Kondane, Pithalkora, Nasik, Kanheri, etc. These belong to the period between the second century BC and the second century AD. The resst belong to the period after the fourth century AD. They were excavated in the time of the Vakatakas, mostly between AD 450 and 600. The last ones were excavated around AD 650. The activity in general, and particularly the embellishments, however, continued till the times of the Rashtrakutas in the eighth-ninth centuries AD.
The early chaityas are large, apsidal, with an elaborate façade, having horseshoe windows on the top of the entrance, and the interior divided into a central nave and lateral aisles by two rows of columns. The aisles continued round the apse as a circumambulatory passage. A rock-cut stupa, in the apse portion, formed the object of worhsip. The ceilings of the aisle wre either formed the object of worship. The ceilings of the aisle were either flat or vaulted, the whole modelled after timber constructions. The uiharas wrre astylar halls, with a number of monks’ cells excavated into their three side walls, the hall having one or more main entrances in front.
The rock architecture of the second phase consists of two apsidal chaityas (19 and 26). It is similar to the earlier type but has a Buddha figure prominently standing out in front of the stupa in the aps, under a nasika or arch projected from the drum of the stupa. This suggests that the form of the stupa itself was conceived as a circular shrine with a domical roof, and a projected vaulted entrance porch in front in the shapee of a sukanasika, conforming to the Vesara type of templees of later periods. The uiharass, except those unfinished or destroyed (3, 5, 14,23,24,28, and 29) combine the characteristics of monasteries and shrines in them, the latter aspect becoming more prominent. Thus these abodes of stone, or hill-abodes, called sailagriha in an inscription datable between AD 450 and 525 in Cave 26, would become uihara-chaityas, if we equate the term chaitya with the shrine containing an object of worship, called also devakula, ayatana, uimana, dhama, mandira, etc. In fact, the inscription in Vihara 16, datable between AD 475 and 500, calls it a chaitya-mandira.
These uiharas generally consist of an outer verandah or porch, corresponding to the muka-mandapa or agra-mandapa of the temple complexes, a pillared hall (sometimes astylar), corresponding to the maha-mandapa, or transversely rectangular ante-chamber intervening between the shrine and the main hall. When the hall has pillars-the arrangement of Central Square enclose by four or more pillars-the others forming a peripheral series-would suggest a ranga-mandapa on the model of or anticipating the Chalukyan navarangas. Into the lateral walls of the maha-mandapa or hall and sometimes also into the hind walls cubical cells are cut for the priestly monks. These are fewer in number than those in regular monasteries-rock –cut and brick-built thus suggesting that their use was restricted to the monks of higher ranks only, or to the priestly order immediately connected with the actual ritual worship in the principal chaitya. Often there are additional chaityas or cells on either side of the principal one on the rear wall of the hall, and also in the lateral walls of the front porch, or agra-mandapa. Even the two-storeyed excavation (Cave 6) has essentially the same plan. The sanctum contains a large figure of the Buddha, often with other sculptures in the ardha-mandapa. In the case of Cave 27, the ardha-mandapa is advanced into the maha-mandapa. The arrangement of a succession of mandapas, one behind the other, with one or more shrine cells at the rear, is one the pattern found in the brick-temple complexes of the Ikshvaku period in Nagarjunakonda that preceded these later excavations in Ajanta.
The hindmost part of such an axial group-consisting of the rectangular ante-chamber and square behind it, sometimes partly advanced into it-is found repeated mostly as the plan in the Hindu and Jain rocu-out cave temples of the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Pandyas and other dynasties of south India, who continued rock-cut architecture from the sixth to about the first half of the tenth century AD or even later, as in Ellora. In fea cases, as in the Ajanta examples, the cave-temple has a large and almost square mandapa, corresponding to the hall with the sanctum does not appear to have had a superstructure of the pyramidal type. These cave-temples, including the chaitya-mandiras, may as well be called mandapa-temples as they are designated in later inscriptions. The excavation of lateral shrines on either side of the main shrine all in a line, with a common mandapa in front, is one line of elaboration, while a common mandapa in front, is one line of elaboration, while the other line would be the excavation of additional shrines into the lateral walls with all the shrines opening into a common hall or verandah as is often found in the verandahs or ante-chambers of Ajanta uiharas. Both the modes are found developed in the later cave-temples of the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Pandyas, and other contemporary dynasties of the south.
The Buddhist rock architecture of Ellora (in all twelve excavations) concentrated at the south end of the hill, as also the excavations at Aurangabad mark the culmination of the series, and they continue the earlier tradition of western India.
The Ellora Buddhist group falls into three sub-groups, the earliest being Caves 1,2,3 and 5 dating from round about the fourth century AD. Caves 4 and from 6 to 10 are assignable to the sixth-seventh centuries AD. Caves 11 and 12, which are unique, belong to the seventh cetury AD. In contrast Cave 1 in the first series is simple and perhaps an experimental excavation. Caves 2 and 3 are essentially similar to each other. They have a verandah or agra-mandapa. While the maha-mandapa of Cave 2 has lateral galleries on either side, that of Cave 3 is without them. The shrine cells behind both contain a seated Buddha. The shrine of Cave 2 has two lateral cells with an ante-chamber of ardha-mandapa. There are monastic cells on the lateral walls of the mandapa of Cave3. Cave 6, the largest among single-storeyed excavations, consists of verandah and a pillared hall with twenty-two cells on its walls. Behind the pillalred maha-mandapa is a transverse ante-champer or ardha-mandapa, with a Buddha shrine in the rear.
Cave 4 is two-storeyed. The groundfloor consists of a hall, an ante-chamber and a shrine behind, with additional cells on either side of the shrine and on the lateral walls of the hall. The upper extant. Cave 8 has again a large hall with three monk-cells on the north wall. The shrine behind, fully cut-out, has a pradakshina patha, and an ante-chamber in front. It contains a seated Buddha. On the north wall of the pradakshina-patha there are monastic cells.
Cave 6 as usual has a verandah and a hall behind, having a lateral hall on the south with six cells. Att the rear of the main hall there are an ante-chamber and the shrine. Cave 7 has behind its verandah a hall with four central pillars and twelve unfinished cells on its three side walls. The central shrine at the rear is flanked on one side by a prajnaparamita and its door-frame is moulded, thus denoting that it is the main shrine.
Cave 9,strictly speaking, is a long hall or mandapa, with a prominent sculptured façade- a poor imitation of Cave 10. The back wall is divided into three bays by four pilasters, the central bay containing a sculptre of the seated Buddha simulating a shrine, while the lateral bay contin attendants.
Cave 10 (Visvakaarma) is a large chaitya similar to those at Ajanta with pillars and aisles and balconies in front of the arch opening. The pillars are simple and the sculptures few. The apse consists of a stupa with a shrine of the seated Buddha cut into it, thus indicating the stupa form to be a circular uimana ( Vesara) with the deity inside. The drum of the stupa has twelve panels all round, ten of which contain miniature Buddhas. The arch on the façade is very elaborate and different in design from that found in Ajanta and elsewhere. Its trefoil arches, and the udgamas and the amalakas, recall similar motifs characteristic of contemporary and later Brahmanical temples in the northern style.
Caves 11 and 12 of the seventh century AD, called Do-tal and Tin-tal, respectively, are perhaps the largest of this class of Buddhist excavation, remarkably original in their plans and storeys, containing interesting iconographic sculptures and architectural embellishments. Though both are three-storeyed, the Do-tal cave was so called since its groundfloor remained buried. A similar rock-out cave excavation, now called Anantasyanagudi in Undavalli on the south bank of the Krishna, also belongs to this class. It is perhaps of the Vishukundini times and was meant originally for a Buddhist dedication. The Aurangabad cave-temples include a chaitya of the earlier Hinayana phase and a number of uiharas (eight in two groups) and other less important excavations, all belonging to the seventh century AD.
In all these excavations the roughness of the texture, even of finished surface, necessitated a plaster coating to render it smooth. Further embellishments came by way of rich paintings of which w have many extant as the celebrated paintings of Ajanta.
The earliest caves excavated by Asoka and his grandson Dasaratha in the very hard local rock (quartzose-gneiss) are in the Barabar and Nagarjuni hills near Gays. They were dedicated to the Ajivikas. The most important examples of this group are the Sudama (Nyagrodha) and the Lomas Rishi caves. These two caves exactly reproduce the plan of the Suddhamma Deva Sabha in the Barhut relief. This series of caves indicates that the simplest form of such temples consisted of a circular cell or shrine alone, as at Guntupalle.,the porch, or mandapa was added later to accommodate worshipper. This mode of rock architecture shifted in the century mainly to the softer trap formations of the hills of western India or western Deccan where, between 200 BC and AD 200, a number of Buddhist excavations were made. They include chaitya halls, which were really temples or places of worship, the object of worship being a stupa representing the Buddha, and uiharas, or monasteries, each with a number of cells opning into a large central assembly-hall. Such examples are found in the vicinity of Poona and Nasik, and Ajanta and Aurangabad. The choice of this area was due to the fact that the hard granites or gneisses, as in Gaya. Such places of worship wre also excavated into the softer rocks on the Eastern Ghats, lying in the northern coastal districts of Andhra and the southern districts of Orissa, as in Guntupalle and Sankaram, both cut-in and cut-out, the examples in Orissa being the Jain caves of Khandagiri and Udayagiri. Among these the Buddhist cave at Kondivte in Salsette, the Tulaja cave in Junnar, near Poona, and the cave in Guntupalle in Andhra bear comparison with the Sudama and Lomas Rishi caves near Gaya.
Beyond the Bomaby-Poona region, where the soft trap-rock formations were exploited for excavation of chaityas and uiharass, further north and north-west, the laterite hills as in Junagad, afforded the venue for such excavations. Laterite when freshly exposed being equally soft and tractable. Futher south, beyond Konkan, in the Kerala area, west of the ghats, again abounding in laterite, it was excavated into though as cave-tombs of megalithic association in corresponding times.
The rock-cut chaitya at Guntupalle is not far removed from the Gaya caves in point of time. It is a stone version of a circular hut with a cupola-like domed roof of thatch or sheet metal resting on a wooden frame-work resembling an inverted basket, and enshrining a monolithic stupa as the object of worship in the centre, circumambulatory passage all round, and a porch in front of its doorway. The porch framing the entrance shows similar imitation of timberwork in stone, including the torana arch above the lintel.
The Buddhist cave-temple in Kondivte is of similar design where the circular shrine or garbha-griha is occupied by a solid stupa leaving only a narrow circumambulatory passage or pradakshina all round within the shrine and occupying the end of a rectangular hall or mandapa, with a flat roof as the shrine itself. The Tulaja cave in Jujjar is also an excavation after the model of a circular chaitya. The main roofing dome rests on a ring of twelve plain octagonal pillars, instead of on a circular wall-as in the other examples-enclosing a central stupa, both surrounded by a circular aisle, or pradakshina, which is half-domed’. The circular garbha-griha of the Suddhamma Deva Sabha in Barhut is a bas-relief representation of the same model.
The other chaityas are mainly apsidal in plan, consisting of a long rectangular hall like a nave, terminating at the farther end into an apse with often two narrower aisles on either side, each separated from the nave by a row of pillars and extended round the apse as a circumambulatory passage round a stupa, also hewn out of rock and occupying the centre of the apse. The doorwayin front is a huge threshold with an arched window on top. In front of the façade of the hall, a transverse after which such excavations were made were, therefore, essentially apsidal temples. Such an apsidal or chapa form resulted perhaps from the coming together of a circular shrine and rectangular assembly-hall, which were originally distinct from each other as in the examples already described.
At Ajanta, in the Decan, out of the thirty excavations, six consisting of two chaitya halls (Nos. 9 and 10), and four uiharas (Nos. 8,12,13, and 30), belong to the early group, and are of the same type as some Buddhist excavations at Bhaja, Karle, Kondane, Pithalkora, Nasik, Kanheri, etc. These belong to the period between the second century BC and the second century AD. The resst belong to the period after the fourth century AD. They were excavated in the time of the Vakatakas, mostly between AD 450 and 600. The last ones were excavated around AD 650. The activity in general, and particularly the embellishments, however, continued till the times of the Rashtrakutas in the eighth-ninth centuries AD.
The early chaityas are large, apsidal, with an elaborate façade, having horseshoe windows on the top of the entrance, and the interior divided into a central nave and lateral aisles by two rows of columns. The aisles continued round the apse as a circumambulatory passage. A rock-cut stupa, in the apse portion, formed the object of worhsip. The ceilings of the aisle wre either formed the object of worship. The ceilings of the aisle were either flat or vaulted, the whole modelled after timber constructions. The uiharas wrre astylar halls, with a number of monks’ cells excavated into their three side walls, the hall having one or more main entrances in front.
The rock architecture of the second phase consists of two apsidal chaityas (19 and 26). It is similar to the earlier type but has a Buddha figure prominently standing out in front of the stupa in the aps, under a nasika or arch projected from the drum of the stupa. This suggests that the form of the stupa itself was conceived as a circular shrine with a domical roof, and a projected vaulted entrance porch in front in the shapee of a sukanasika, conforming to the Vesara type of templees of later periods. The uiharass, except those unfinished or destroyed (3, 5, 14,23,24,28, and 29) combine the characteristics of monasteries and shrines in them, the latter aspect becoming more prominent. Thus these abodes of stone, or hill-abodes, called sailagriha in an inscription datable between AD 450 and 525 in Cave 26, would become uihara-chaityas, if we equate the term chaitya with the shrine containing an object of worship, called also devakula, ayatana, uimana, dhama, mandira, etc. In fact, the inscription in Vihara 16, datable between AD 475 and 500, calls it a chaitya-mandira.
These uiharas generally consist of an outer verandah or porch, corresponding to the muka-mandapa or agra-mandapa of the temple complexes, a pillared hall (sometimes astylar), corresponding to the maha-mandapa, or transversely rectangular ante-chamber intervening between the shrine and the main hall. When the hall has pillars-the arrangement of Central Square enclose by four or more pillars-the others forming a peripheral series-would suggest a ranga-mandapa on the model of or anticipating the Chalukyan navarangas. Into the lateral walls of the maha-mandapa or hall and sometimes also into the hind walls cubical cells are cut for the priestly monks. These are fewer in number than those in regular monasteries-rock –cut and brick-built thus suggesting that their use was restricted to the monks of higher ranks only, or to the priestly order immediately connected with the actual ritual worship in the principal chaitya. Often there are additional chaityas or cells on either side of the principal one on the rear wall of the hall, and also in the lateral walls of the front porch, or agra-mandapa. Even the two-storeyed excavation (Cave 6) has essentially the same plan. The sanctum contains a large figure of the Buddha, often with other sculptures in the ardha-mandapa. In the case of Cave 27, the ardha-mandapa is advanced into the maha-mandapa. The arrangement of a succession of mandapas, one behind the other, with one or more shrine cells at the rear, is one the pattern found in the brick-temple complexes of the Ikshvaku period in Nagarjunakonda that preceded these later excavations in Ajanta.
The hindmost part of such an axial group-consisting of the rectangular ante-chamber and square behind it, sometimes partly advanced into it-is found repeated mostly as the plan in the Hindu and Jain rocu-out cave temples of the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Pandyas and other dynasties of south India, who continued rock-cut architecture from the sixth to about the first half of the tenth century AD or even later, as in Ellora. In fea cases, as in the Ajanta examples, the cave-temple has a large and almost square mandapa, corresponding to the hall with the sanctum does not appear to have had a superstructure of the pyramidal type. These cave-temples, including the chaitya-mandiras, may as well be called mandapa-temples as they are designated in later inscriptions. The excavation of lateral shrines on either side of the main shrine all in a line, with a common mandapa in front, is one line of elaboration, while a common mandapa in front, is one line of elaboration, while the other line would be the excavation of additional shrines into the lateral walls with all the shrines opening into a common hall or verandah as is often found in the verandahs or ante-chambers of Ajanta uiharas. Both the modes are found developed in the later cave-temples of the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Pandyas, and other contemporary dynasties of the south.
The Buddhist rock architecture of Ellora (in all twelve excavations) concentrated at the south end of the hill, as also the excavations at Aurangabad mark the culmination of the series, and they continue the earlier tradition of western India.
The Ellora Buddhist group falls into three sub-groups, the earliest being Caves 1,2,3 and 5 dating from round about the fourth century AD. Caves 4 and from 6 to 10 are assignable to the sixth-seventh centuries AD. Caves 11 and 12, which are unique, belong to the seventh cetury AD. In contrast Cave 1 in the first series is simple and perhaps an experimental excavation. Caves 2 and 3 are essentially similar to each other. They have a verandah or agra-mandapa. While the maha-mandapa of Cave 2 has lateral galleries on either side, that of Cave 3 is without them. The shrine cells behind both contain a seated Buddha. The shrine of Cave 2 has two lateral cells with an ante-chamber of ardha-mandapa. There are monastic cells on the lateral walls of the mandapa of Cave3. Cave 6, the largest among single-storeyed excavations, consists of verandah and a pillared hall with twenty-two cells on its walls. Behind the pillalred maha-mandapa is a transverse ante-champer or ardha-mandapa, with a Buddha shrine in the rear.
Cave 4 is two-storeyed. The groundfloor consists of a hall, an ante-chamber and a shrine behind, with additional cells on either side of the shrine and on the lateral walls of the hall. The upper extant. Cave 8 has again a large hall with three monk-cells on the north wall. The shrine behind, fully cut-out, has a pradakshina patha, and an ante-chamber in front. It contains a seated Buddha. On the north wall of the pradakshina-patha there are monastic cells.
Cave 6 as usual has a verandah and a hall behind, having a lateral hall on the south with six cells. Att the rear of the main hall there are an ante-chamber and the shrine. Cave 7 has behind its verandah a hall with four central pillars and twelve unfinished cells on its three side walls. The central shrine at the rear is flanked on one side by a prajnaparamita and its door-frame is moulded, thus denoting that it is the main shrine.
Cave 9,strictly speaking, is a long hall or mandapa, with a prominent sculptured façade- a poor imitation of Cave 10. The back wall is divided into three bays by four pilasters, the central bay containing a sculptre of the seated Buddha simulating a shrine, while the lateral bay contin attendants.
Cave 10 (Visvakaarma) is a large chaitya similar to those at Ajanta with pillars and aisles and balconies in front of the arch opening. The pillars are simple and the sculptures few. The apse consists of a stupa with a shrine of the seated Buddha cut into it, thus indicating the stupa form to be a circular uimana ( Vesara) with the deity inside. The drum of the stupa has twelve panels all round, ten of which contain miniature Buddhas. The arch on the façade is very elaborate and different in design from that found in Ajanta and elsewhere. Its trefoil arches, and the udgamas and the amalakas, recall similar motifs characteristic of contemporary and later Brahmanical temples in the northern style.
Caves 11 and 12 of the seventh century AD, called Do-tal and Tin-tal, respectively, are perhaps the largest of this class of Buddhist excavation, remarkably original in their plans and storeys, containing interesting iconographic sculptures and architectural embellishments. Though both are three-storeyed, the Do-tal cave was so called since its groundfloor remained buried. A similar rock-out cave excavation, now called Anantasyanagudi in Undavalli on the south bank of the Krishna, also belongs to this class. It is perhaps of the Vishukundini times and was meant originally for a Buddhist dedication. The Aurangabad cave-temples include a chaitya of the earlier Hinayana phase and a number of uiharas (eight in two groups) and other less important excavations, all belonging to the seventh century AD.
In all these excavations the roughness of the texture, even of finished surface, necessitated a plaster coating to render it smooth. Further embellishments came by way of rich paintings of which w have many extant as the celebrated paintings of Ajanta.
