General view of the hillside with Buddhist cave temples, Karli
0000; Gale Group; Linguagem: English
Resumo
The entrance to the main chaitya hall, is largely obscured by a tree at left of print. India Museum no. 1442. Received from Captain Lyon, 7 February 1871. Duplicate print at Photo 1001 (3200). 551. - This view is taken from the path which leads to the cave. The house on the right is the entrance, the cave itself being under the tree a little to the left. There are several smaller excavations cut into the hill as may be seen. They are of no merit and will not repay the trouble of scrambling up to them. Before visiting the cave a few remarks may not be out of place respecting its history. Mr. Ferguson describes this one as the largest, as well as the most complete Chaitya or Buddhist temple hitherto discovered in India, and to have been excavated at a time when the style was in its greatest purity. As this is the first time allusion has been made to one of these sacred edifices of the Buddhists, a cursory glance at the origin of Buddhism may not be uninteresting. A race of Kings known as the Solar dynasty had long held paramount sway in Oude, but about the 10th or 12th century B. C. their descendants were reduced by the Lunar race to a petty principality at the foot of the Himalayas. Here Sakya Muni the founder of this religion and one of the last of the Solar Kings was born. For thirty five years he enjoyed the pleasures, and followed the occupations usual to his rank, but at that age he determined to devote the rest of his life in an attempt to alleviate the misery incidental to human existence. For this purpose he forsook parents and wife and all the advantages of his position, spent years in the meditation and mortification necessary to fit himself for his mission, and devoted the rest of his long life, in wandering from city to city teaching and preaching, and doing everything that gentle means could effect, to desseminate the doctrines which he believed were to regenerate the world, and take the sting out of human misery. He was absorbed into the deity, in other words died in Northern Behar in the 80th year of his age 543 B. C. For the avowed purpose of reducing the precepts of the founder to writing, two convocations were held, but it is not generally supposed that the religion had become the religion of the state, even if widely diffused among the people, until the conversion of the celebrated King Asoka. who, seventeen years after he ascended the throne, assembled the third great convocation at Patna about 300 years after the death of the founder, and 250 before Christ. It was then resolved to send out missionaries to propagate the doctrines of Buddhism, and treaties were formed for the protection of its followers. From this time the faith seems to have spread with immense rapidity, but always by gentle means, we have absolutely no hint of either war or persecution being used for its dissemination, and for at least the next ten centuries, it was the dominant faith all over the north of India. Wonderful as this rapid diffusion of Buddhism must appear. the secret of its success lies in the fact, that the great mass of the people were composed of the casteless Turanians, who had been long held in subjection by the caste loving Aryans, and when Sakya Muni called on these long subject races to rise and reassert their rights, his appeal found a ready response in their hearts, and being by far the most numerous, the revolution was easily accomplished, and maintained, till the Buddhists in their turn were squeezed out of India by fresh immigration across the Indus on the West, and the increase of Dravidian races in the South. The monuments of the Buddhist religion, which remain at the present day may he classed under three heads Topes, Chaityas, and Viharas or monasteries. First as to Topes, so many of which are scattered over India; it will be sufficient here to observe, that the principal building consists of a dome somewhat less than an hemisphere, on the top of this was a flat space, sometimes surrounded by a stone railing, and in the centre of this stands an object known to Indian Archaeologists as a 'Tee' of which the only ancient wooden one known to exist, will be seen in Photo. 554. These were intended either to contain relics, or mark sacred spots, and commemorate events in Buddhist history. The second class of monuments to which as already stated this cave belongs, were both in use and form identical with the Christian churches, more especially that of early basilican type. All the Indian examples are rock cut, and though their interiors are thus more perfectly preserved, we are left almost entirely in ignorance of what their outward form should have been; of these caves nearly fifty groups exist in India Proper, some containing as many as 100 different and distinct excavations, others not more than 10 or 12: but altogether not less than 1000 distinct specimens are to be found, of which upwards of 900 are Buddhist monasteries, while of their temples not more than 30 have yet been discovered. As to the time at which these caves were excavated, the oldest, those of Behar and Cuttack in Bengal extend from 250 B. C. to about 250 A. D., whereas in the West of India as at Ajunta and Karlee the date of the excavation can hardly be anterior to that of Christ, though on the last named side [?site] it was continued for a thousand years after it was abandoned in the country where it originated. There are no very certain grounds for fixing the date of the excavation of the one now about to be examined, but we shall not err far in attributing it to the century before, or that immediately after the Christian era, most probably the latter. Photographer: Lyon, Edmund David.
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