Report On Elura Cave Temples and Bramhanical and Jaina Caves in Western India

SR No.: 011091
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Trubner and Company London
Publication Year: 1883
Total Pages: 209
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 14 MB

Page 35

ARILEOLXICAL SURVEY OF WESTERX IXDI
seated Budiha in the teaching attitude, with Avalokitesvara or Padmapâni and Manjusri or Vajrapani only as attendants. At the north end of the hall is another shrine, with a Bulha quatted on a throne and attendants. On the walls of this cave are many small figures of Buddha, a Padmapani with four arms, figures stated on lotuses, in the lulitásund wwwi, with one foot under them and the other on the ground-both male and female. Figures of Jahisasuri and Ganapati on the south wall are evidently of late date.
,CAVE XII.-The Tix THÁL.
The twelfth and last of the series of Bauddha caves here is the Tin Thâl or three<toreve cave-temple, it lapted for worship rather than as a monastery. This is, of its class, one of the most important and interesting cares at Elura. In no other series do we find a three-stor vel vihårt carriel out with the same consistency of design and the like magnificence is in this example, and from these circumstances there is a grandeur and propriety in its parance that it woull be litticult to surpass in care architecture. The greatest interest. However, lies in its being a transitional example between the styles of the two great religions which diville between them the principal esamples of the architectural magnilicence of the place. On comparing it with the Bus Avatára Cave, tbat all but imme
litely needs, it seems almost as if the buiklers of this cave hul been persuaded to change Thir faith and his wentle means to wlopt the new religion, and not that they had been convertel by persreution, its has been very generally supposed. So gently, indeed, does the change seem to take place, that we can barlly letect it in the architecture, though the Sculptures a ce it with sufficient distinctness. But the mode in which sculpture is -uistituted in the upper storey of this cave for the arrangement of cells in the older and urmuine viharia, shows that it change was creeping over the form of the religion long before it pronome itself by the acceptance and adoration of the new gods.
The inner portion of the court is 107 feet widely about 46 deep), but just inside the entranet at an'at of 16 feet by 19 feet has to be able to this. On the right side of this latter is it stair leading up to the top of the front wall of the court.
The lower hall, which is own in front, measures about 116 feet by 2 feet and is 11 feet high. the rooting supported by twenty-four quare pillars in three rows, with pilasters
on the back wall. In the left or north end wall are three cells, each with a stone bench in it, and in the south and are two cells and an open apartment forming a lobby to the stair learling up to the first floor. In the back wall are also four cells, two near each end, and in the middle is a large antechamber to the shrine, 37 feet wide and 40 feet deep, with two suare pillars in front, and four more supporting the roof, with corresponding pilasters on cach side wall, having a cell on each side between the first and second pilasters.
Between the two pilasters, on the back wall of the ball to the left of the antechamber, is a large compartment carved in nine suare panels (plate xix, fig. 6), cach sculptured with il ditferent figure. Buldha himself occupies the centre with Avalokitesvara on his right hand and Vajrapani or Mañjušri on his left. The figure in the middle of the upper row has a sword supported on a lotus flower-a symbol borne by different Lokesvaras, such as Manjusri, Suhanátha, and Mahasthånapràpta; possibly it may be the last of these. The figures on each side of him have branches of different sorts, and those in the lower corners have a pennon and a book similarly upheld, while the middle one has a closed