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 59

ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF WESTERN INDIA.
aisle, four-armel, with trisule and sword, and holding by the nose the buffalo, which repre sents the Asura; Ganapati, also four-armed, is carved in the north end.
On the rock on the left side of the court, at the end of the façade, is a figure of Brahmâ with three faces, represented in plate xxxvi, fig. 1.
Cave XVIII, close to this, has an irregular-shaped court in front, in the middle of which is a shallow trough. The cave is raised above the level of the court, and has four unfinished pillars in front. The hall is 67 feet long by about 22 deep, having a slightly raise platform inside. At the back is an antechamber 30 feet by 10 feet, with two square pillars in frat and corresponding pilasters, having low bases of two members. The shrine has no polerkabig path round it, and contains a round structural él or altar-a modern form-and a lago.
3
Cave XIX. (plate xxxii, fig. 2) is a very irregular and much-decayed eave, with a wide entrance. The hall inside is 43 feet wide by about 32 feet deep, and the shrine is surrounded by a prilakshina passage.
Close to the next is a ruinous cave filled with earth and hidden by underwood. Cave XX. (tig. 3) is little more than a shrine, with a wide passage round it, or a hall 37 feet wide by 30 feet deep in the middle, of which a block has been left 20 feet by 16 hewn into a shrine, the front of which has been given in the Cce Temples, plate lxxviii, which shows the carving on the different members of the door mouldings, and the figures on each side so very analogous, even in details, to what are found in similar positions in the Bauddha caves, as may be seen by comparing it with the front of the shrine in Cave VI. (Care Temples, plate Ixi), that one is almost forced to allow that the one seet may have copied from the other. On a platform outside is a square base, either of a dhrajastambha or the remains of a pedestal for a Nandi. Lower down by 6 or 8 feet, and farther back, is another small platform.
CAVE XXI-RAMESVARA.
Close to the last is the cave No. XXI., known as Ramėsvara, which has been described in considerable detail in The Care Temples (pp. 438 f., and plate lxxvi, fig. 1, and lxxvii). The plan, it will be remarked, is similar to that of Cave XVII, but without the pillars in the floor of the hall, and more closely resembling that of Cave XXVI. It has two columns in front of the shrine, with corresponding pilasters; one of the columns is represented in plate xxxiii, fig. 3. They are somewhat of the Elephanta type, but in place of the bracket is a deep square abaeus, carved on the front and sides with figures. The lower half of the shaft is square, the upper portions of it being covered with bands of rich tracery. Over these is a deep octagonal member, with dwarfs on the corners; and the upper portion of the shaft is circular, with forty-nine very shallow or flat flutes. The side chapels have each a similar pair of columns in front, but standing on a raised platform, and with only a thin square abacus above.
The façade of the cave is shown in plate v. It has a low screen wall in front, now much rotted away from the accumulation of earth that long lay against it. Below was a moulded base to about the level of the floor inside. Above this is a string-course of auimals, chiefly elephants. The face of the rail over this is divided into narrow panels by broad vertical bands of arabesques, each panel containing a standing male and female figure, and over this runs a coping of festooned carving. From this wall rise the pillars which support the roof, of which the lower portions of the shafts, partly embraced in the