History of Indian and Eastern ArchitectureFergusson, James
History
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- India; Architecture, Asian
One of the best known and most frequently described chaityas in India is
that on the island of Salsette, in Bombay Harbour, known as the great
Kenheri cave. In dimensions it belongs to the first rank, being 88 ft. 6
in. by 39 ft. 10 in., and it has the advantage that its date is now
almost absolutely fixed. In the verandah there is an inscription
recording that the celebrated Buddhaghosha dedicated one of the
middle-sized statues in the porch to the honour of the lord
Bhagawan,[150] and in the same porch another inscription records the
execution of the great statues of Buddha by “Gotamiputra’s imperial
descendant Sri Yadnya Sat Karni.”[151] Now we know that the first-named,
Buddhaghosha, went on his mission to Ceylon, B.C. 410,[152] and he is
not known ever to have returned to India; and Yadnya Sri has always been
assumed to have lived 408-428, generally it must be confessed on the
mistaken etymology of confounding his name with that of Yuegai of the
Chinese. That, however, is apparently only a translation of the “Moon
beloved king,” and more applicable, consequently, to Chandra Sri or
Chandragupta, who was his contemporary. The true basis for the
determination of his date is the Puranic chronology, which, for this
period seems indisputable.[153] Be all this as it may, the conjunction
of these two names here in this cave settles their date, and settles
also the age of the cave as belonging to the early years of the 5th
century, at the time when Fa Hian was travelling in India.
This being so, one would naturally expect that the architecture of the
cave should exhibit some stage of progress intermediate between cave No.
10 and cave No. 19 of Ajunta, but nothing of the sort is apparent here;
the Kenheri cave is a literal copy of the great cave at Karli, but in so
inferior a style of art that, when I first saw it, I was inclined to
ascribe it to an age of Buddhist decrepitude, when the traditions of
true art had passed away, and men were trying by spasmodic efforts to
revive a dead art. This being now proved not to be the case, the
architecture of this cave can only be looked upon as an exceptional
anomaly, the principles of whose design are unlike anything else to be
found in India, emanating probably from some individual caprice, the
origin of which we may probably never now be able to recover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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