Fortunately we have in this cave an inscription containing a well-known name. It is said to have been excavated by the wife of the commander-in-chief of the Emperor Yadnya Sri, Sat Karni, descendant of King Gautamiputra, in the seventh year.[189] We are not able to fix the exact year to which this date refers; probably it was only regnal, but it does not seem doubtful that this king reigned in the first quarter of the 5th century, and we consequently have in this cave a fixed point on which to base our calculations for the period about the time. [Illustration: 82. Pillar in Yadnya Sri Cave. (From a Drawing by Mr. Burgess.)] Beyond this there is still another excavation, No. 17--it can hardly be called a vihara--of very irregular shape, and covered with sculpture of a date at least a century more modern than that of the cave last described. Buddha is there represented in all his attitudes, standing or sitting, accompanied by chowrie bearers, flying figures, dwarfs, &c. On one side is a colossal recumbent figure of him attaining Nirvana, which is a sure sign of a very modern date. Besides these, there are Dyani Buddhas, Bodhisatwas, and all the modern pantheon of Buddhism, arranged in most admired confusion, as in all the most modern caves. There is no inscription, but from its sculpture and the form of its pillars we may safely ascribe it to the last age of Buddhist art, say about the year 600 or later. The pillars approximate closely in style to those found at Elephanta, and in the Brahmanical caves at Ellora, which from other evidence have been assigned to dates varying from 600 to 800 years of our era. More has perhaps been said about the Nassick caves than their architectural importance would seem at first sight to justify, but they are one of the most important of the purely Buddhist groups, and they have hardly yet been alluded to in European books. Their great merit, however, is that they belong to one of the most important of the older Indian dynasties, known as the Andrabrityas, Sata Karnis, or Satavahanas. Being of purely Indian extraction, they, however, did not coin money like the Punjab dynasties, nor their contemporaries and rivals the Sah kings of Gujerat, who brought the art with them when they came as conquerors from the north-west, where they had learnt the art from the Greeks. This dynasty has, consequently, been overlooked by numismatists and others, and can only be rehabilitated by their inscriptions and their architectural work, on which these are found inscribed. AJUNTA VIHARAS.