Chaitya and !Vial-a excavated two kinds of cave structures, the Chaitya, or temple, and the Vihara, or monastery. The most ancient known caves are those in the eastern mountains of the Ganges, near Rajagriha, the capital of India in the flourishing days of Buddhism. They are small and without any architectural ornament; the roof is vaulted, and they date, according to inscriptions, from about zoo B. c. The caves of Udayagiri (" Sunrise Mountain"), upon the north-east coast of Hindustan, are rather later, dating from the second centiiry B. c. These are simple viharas with an entrance-portico of greater or less length in front, supported by strong pillars, the forms of which show the most exact translation of a simple massive wood-con struction into stone; some are decorated with figures.
The Grotto of Karl/ lies east of Bombay, in a pass of the Ghauts. This is one of the most remarkable and oldest of the Chaitya caves; it is oblong, and is divided by two ranges of pillars into a middle aisle and two side aisles. The end opposite to the entrance is semicircular, and the pillars run round it; so that the side-aisle is continuous round the end of the middle one. In the centre of the apse is a tope. The pillars have a massive six teen-sided shaft above a plain base, a capital shaped like a hanging bell, and above the capitals figures of kneeling elephants with their conductors. Massive and solid though the entire details are, they do not belie their derivation from wood-construction; the repetition of the Persian columns with their capitals in the form of a hanging bell, together with the pro jecting figures of animals, do not leave room for doubt either that we have here a copy of the Persian or that a similar original construction has worked out a similar effect in the resulting forms. The vault rises above the columns in horseshoe-shape and is set with wooden ribs like the hull of a ship; the interior is lighted by a great semicircular window above the entrance. It is believed that the date of this grotto may be fixed in the second century B. C. Near it are a number of smaller unimportant viharas.
Ajuntah Chailyas.—At Ajuntah, in the north-west of the Deccan, upon a lateral valley of the Tapti, are about thirty Buddhist caves, the lowest situated to to 12 metres (33 to 39 feet) above the bed of the valley, While the most elevated are hewn from an inaccessible cliff roo metres (32S feet) high. Some of these grottos are older than the Christian era. One of
them is a great chaitya 3o metres (nearly too feet) long and rather less than half as broad, with twenty octangular pillars. The vaulting of the nave shows that' here also wooden ribs originally served as a covering and protection. Though in most of the chaityas the side-aisles have flat roofs, originally of timber-construction (as their later copies hewn in stone prove), this chaitya has vaulted side-aisles, in which already the wooden ribs are represented in stone. Rather more recent (2oo-3oo A. D.) is a smaller similar chaitya, while a third small but richly-decorated temple cave excavated somewhere between the fourth and sixth centuries has seventeen pillars and is one of the most graceful of Hindu monuments. A fourth dates from between 7oo and moo A. D.
Ajuntab l'iharas.—Among the viharas—most of which have entirely flat roofs—may be particularly noted one the central space of which, nearly zo metres (65 feet) square, is surrounded by twenty pillars which copy woodwork in the most elegant manner; its date is between 400 and 600 A. D. Another (7oo–I000 A. D.) has twelve pillars in its square cen tral ball; there are five cells on each side and three in the rear, the middle one of the latter leading into a second, beyond it. A portico forms a facade. Some of the grottos have wall-paintings of great beauty, while some are as yet unfinished.
Numerous Buddhist grottos occur upon the island of Salsette, near Bombay. The oldest date from the fourth or fifth, the latest from the ninth or tenth, century of our era.
Ellora Caves: Tempe of as well as the most characteristic and beautiful monuments of Hindu architecture are the caves of Ellora, consisting of about thirty grottos of different sizes arranged in a semicircle within a space of a little more than a league. Some of these spread out into an extensive plan, while others are arranged in several storeys. The southern group is Buddhistic, like those hitherto described (p. 117); it culminates in the chaitya known as the Temple of Viswakarma (ol. 17, fig. 4), which dates from 600 to goo A. D. This grotto has octangular pillars, above which, projecting bodily inward, is a sculptured frieze from which springs the stilted semicircular vault set with flat stone ribs. Several viharas surround this temple; among these, the Dehr Warra Cave is the most important.