Jaina Monuments and Places First Class Importance

Author(s): T N Ramchandran
Publisher: Veer Shasan Sangh Calcutta

Page 15

BARABAR HILLS
model. This particular cave, however, bears no inscriptions either of Asoka or of Daśaratha, and the fact that its interior was left in unfinished state suggests that it was the latest of the whole group. Probably, it was not excavated until after the close of Dasaratha's reign. The exacavated chaitya-halls in the Barābar hills, Bihar, were dedicated to the use, not of Buddhists, but of the Ājīvikas.
The Lomas Risi cave, is undated, and apparently unfinished, but certainly Maurya. The shrine chamber in it is oval, and the entiance façade is carved, in imitation of wooden forms, in the shape of an ogee arch above heavy sloping jambs, and the pedt ment is decorated with a frieze of well designed elephants. Atleast four other Maurya cave shrines or monasteries are found in the same district. All are excavated in the hardest rock, but are exquisitely finished and polished like glass inside. The forms are evidently those of contemporay sliuctural buildings in indigenous style.
3. MATHURĀ.
The steady growth of plastic art derives additional light from the pre-Kushäņa sculptures of Mathură, which are the more instructive, because they all emanate from one and the same school. These sculptures divide themselves into three main classes, the carliest belonging approximately to the middle of the second century B.G.; the second to the following century: and the last associated with the rule of the local Satraps. Of these, the first two are closely al in in style to the reliefs of the Bhārhut rail and Sānchi toranas respectively. The sculptures of the third class are more exceptional. Their style is that of the Early School in a late and decadent phase, when its arts was