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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
294
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Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
similarly labelled by a second inscription recording it to be a cave excavated by King Kadampa-Kudepa. A puzzling complication has arisen from a third inscription incised over the doorway of a side chamber on the southern side of the verandah of Kadampa Kudepa's cave and recording it to be a cave excavated by Prince Vaḍukha-Varikha. Bat it is somewhat difficult to decide whether the side chamber confronting the verandah of Kadampa-Kudepa's cave or a separate chamber provided with some sort of a verandah and situated on the southern side of the open enclosure or courtyard in front of Kadampa-Kudepa's cave was intended to be recorded in the third inscription as Prince Vaḍukha- Varikha's cave. In discussing the problem of the relative total of the caves and inscriptions, we have sought to maintain that although the third inscription was incised over the door-way of the former, it was really intended to refer to the latter, that is, to the suite on the southern side of the court-yard, and that the object of engraving the third inscription over the door-way of the former was to draw the notice of the visitor or pilgrim entering the verandah of Kadampa-Kudepa's cave and moving towards the right in peeping into the three chambers including that on the south side with the possibility of coming out without minding what was on the south side of the courtyard. If this argument be sound, we may make bold to say that the system was to count each suit of one or more chambers, whether in one line or not, but surely confronted by some sort of a verandah, as one cave.
Thirdly, as to the fate of the missing caves, we cannot but be astonished that so many of the caves on the Kumari hill have vanished beyond recognition. Sir John Marshall says that taken together, the two groups of caves on the hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, "comprise more than thirty-five excavations." But we are not, as yet, aware what method he has adopted in counting the total of the surviving caves, and whether the number suggested by him includes the four or five caves which have suuk down showing still their roofs above the ground on two sides of the Udayagiri or not. We may, once again, draw the reader's attention to Mr. Stirling's paper in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. XV, containing, as it does, all that we yet know of the miserable fate that overtook the missing caves,
1
As for the names whereby the caves are known at present, it is obvious that we require more explanations than one to account for them. In the
1. Manomohan Ganguly, in his Orissa and Her Remains, p. 81, has produced the following list of caves on the two hills (1) Hathi-Gampha, (2) Vaikunthapura,
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