THE GANESH CAVES.


Fifty-six miles to the north of Poona lies the old town of Junner, which
owing to its proximity to the historic Nana Ghat was in the earliest times
an important centre of trade. As early as 100 years before the birth of
Christ, the Nana Pass was one of the chief highways of trade between
Aparantaka or the Northern Konkan and the Deccan; and although the steep
and slippery nature of the ascent must have prevented cart-traffic, the
number of pack-bullocks and ponies that were annually driven upwards
towards the cooler atmosphere and richer soil of Junner must have been
considerable. Once the Nana Ghat had been crossed the traveller found
himself in a land marked out by Nature herself for sojourn and settlement:
for there lay before his eyes a fruitful plain, well-shaded, well-watered
and girt with mighty hills of rock, which needed but the skill of man to be
transformed into a chain of those "Viharas" or places of rest and
recreation, which the Buddhists of pre-Christian and early Christian ages
sought to establish. Thus it happens that in each of the mountain ranges
which rise around Junner are found caves and shrines hewn out of the solid
rock by the followers of Buddhism, some with inscriptions in obsolete
characters and all of them in a wonderful state of preservation,
considering the ages that have passed since their foundation.

Among those most easy of access are the Ganesh Lena, as they are called,
hollowed out of the vast rounded scarp, which rising a hundred feet above
the plain projects from the Hatkeshvar and Suleman ranges about a mile
northward of the town. A fairly smooth but dusty road leads the traveller
down to the Kukdi river dried by the fair weather into stagnant pools, in
which the women wash their clothes and the buffaloes lounge heavily, and