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AUGUST, 1911.) ORIGIN & DECLINE OF BUDDHISM & JAINISM IN S. I.
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may be made to Mr. Venkayya's remarks on them in the Annual Report on Epigraphy for 1908. As regards the position of one and all of them, Mr. Griffith's excellent note that seclusion from the world and the active business of life was obviously the first essential of the saintly life of Buddhism, as of all ascetic forms of religion, and that the originators of the caves seem to have been influenced not only in the choice of the site, but also by a keen appreciation of natural beauty, and that all the caves are superbly placed with an obvious selection of a noble outlook and perfect seclusion from the world, are well applicable. That during the time of the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian, caves were resorted to in India by Buddhist monks is evident from his statement that “three li before you reach the top of Mount Gșidhrakūta there is a cavern in the rocks facing the south in which Buddha sat in meditation; thirty paces to the north-west there is another where Ânanda was sitting in meditation when the Déva, Mara-Pisuna, having assumed the form of a valture took his plazo in front of the cavern and frightened the disciple; going on still to the west they found the cavern called Sritapara, the place where after the nirvana of Buddha 500 arhats collected the stras." The Buddhist priests of later years than the time of the great founder appear to have followed thu same practice, and the hands of the devotees developed the rade natural caves into habitable dwellings befitting their residents. Whether they were primarily designed as the provision for the annual “retreat' initiated by Buddha when it was ordained that the monks were to keep rassa and refrain from peregrination during the rains, or were intended to give a cool resort during the hot season, cannot now be easily determined. Besides being watertight, convenient for human habitation and far above any possible accident from the rains and foods of the monsoon, to this day they are agreeably cool even in the hottest weather. The doubt raised in the first part of the passage quoted here, wbether the caverns were designed for the annual retreat" or were intended to give a cool resort, can be cleared from the reply which Mahinda gavo to Tissa when the latter requested the saint to halt in the beautifal garden adjoining his capital on a certain night. The statement of the théra shows that the Buddhist monks were prohibited by the rules of their order to stay even in the immediate proximity of cities or villages, and it also accounts in a way for the necessity for the caverns.
In the general forms of these, viz., one boulder overhanging another, a flat one on which it rests at one extremity, in the cutting of the projecting rock to a certain depth in order to prevent the rain water from gliding into the cavern, in the existence on the bottom boulder (1) of smoothly chiselled beds with a slightly raised portion for the head, just safficient for a man to lie down, (2) of the groove immediately in the outer fringe of the cave quite below the cutting on the upper rock for carrying away the drippling of the rain water to a distance, (3) of big boles cut on the open yard intended perhaps for fizing poles or railings, and (4) of a number of smaller holes for other works of protection-in all these details the caverns of the Påņdya country resemble those in Ceylon, which are assuredly Buddhistic in their characier. As Aritta and his followers, together with Mabinda and several others, are reported in the Maharania to have gone abroad to propagate the Bauddha religion, and as several caverns are found in the vicinity of a place called Arittâpatti (the village of Aritta), it might be presumed that this place was the first settlement of the Singhalese apostle Arifta of the 3rd century B.C. Whatever might have been the origin of Buddhism in other parts of the Dekkan, it was in all probability introduced into the Pandya territory from Ceylon, mostly after the 18th year of the reign of Asoka. It is also likely that even in earlier times Buddhist influence was felt in the Pandya country, as its people appear to bave had frequent communication and even marriage connection with the early colonisers of Ceylon in the 5th century B.C.
• Ajasta Paintinga by Mr. Griffith, Introduction.
Ibid.
Mahavara, Wijesinha's translation, p. 54.
