By-Ways of Bombay by C.V.O. S. M. Edwardes
page 87 of 99 (87%)
page 87 of 99 (87%)
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Of the twenty-four caves all except the eighteenth or chapel-cave were originally _layanas_ or monastic dwellings and contained no images when first their makers gazed upon their work and found it good. But long after their earliest inmates had conquered Desire and had gained Nirvana for their souls the followers of the Mahayana school from Northern India took the dwellings for their own use and carved out of the austere walls of their precursors' cells those images and idols which are now the chief feature of the caves. Buddha seated upon the lion-throne and the figures of his Bodhisattvas with their fly-whisks are symbols of a later and more idolatrous form of Buddhism and are several centuries later than the days (b. c. 110) when the great monk (Sramana) fashioned the nineteenth cave in the reign of Krishna the Satakarni. Nor has Vandalism in the guise of the Mahayana school been alone at work here. The tenth cave once contained a relic-shrine or _dagoba_ similar to the relic-shrines at Karli, Shivner and Ganesh Lena; but in its place now stands a hideous figure of Bhairav aflame with red-lead, and nought remains to testify to the former presence of the shrine save the Buddhist T capital, the umbrellas and the flags which surmounted it. The eleventh cave bears traces of Jain sacrilege in the blue figure of the Tirthankar or hierach who sits cross-legged in the back wall and in the figure of Ambika on the right. But the most conspicuous example of the alteration of ancient monuments to suit the needs of late comers is the twentieth cave, where the colossal Buddha, who muses with his attendants in the dense darkness of the inner shrine, has been smeared with black pigment and adorned with gold tinsel and is proudly introduced to you by the local _pujari_ as Dharmaraja, the eldest of the five Pandavas, the surrounding Bodhisattvas being metamorphosed into Nakula, Sahadeva, Bhima, Arjuna, Krishna and Draupadi, the joint wife of the five! Alas for "the Perfect One" in whose honour, as the inscription tells us, "the wife of the great war-lord Bhavagopa" commenced building the |
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