covered in India, and was excavated at a time when the style was in its greatest purity.

There are no very certain grounds for fixing the date of its excavation, but we shall not err far in attributing it to the century before or after the Christian era-most probably the latter. There are some reasons for ascribing it to the era of Salivahana (A.D. 78), although this, it must be confessed, is at present little more than a mere approximation to the truth.

The building, as will be seen by the annexed illustrations, resembles to a very great extent an early Christian church in its arrangements; consisting of a nave and side aisles, terminating in an apse or semidome, round which the aisle is carried. The general dimensions of the interior are 126 ft. from the entrance to the back wall, by 45 ft. 7 in. in width from wall to wall. The side aisles, however, are very much narrower than in Christian churches, the central one being 25 ft. 7 in., so that the others are only 10 ft. wide, including the thickness of the pillars. As a scale for comparison, it may be mentioned that its arrangement and dimensions are very similar to those of the choir of Norwich Cathedral, or of the Abbaye aux Hommes at Caen, omitting the outer aisles in the latter buildings. The thickness of the piers at Norwich and Caen nearly corresponds with the breadth of the aisles in

18

View of Cave at Karli. From a drawing by Mr. Salt, corrected by the Author.

the Indian temple. In height, however, Karli is very inferior, being only 42 or perhaps 45 ft. from the floor to the apex, as nearly as can be ascertained.

Fifteen pillars on each side separate the nave from the aisles; each of these has a tall base, an octagonal shaft, and richly ornamented capital, on which kneel two elephants, each bearing two figures, generally a man and a woman, but sometimes two females, all very much better executed than such ornaments usually are. The seven pillars behind the altar are plain octagonal piers, without either base or capital, and the four under the entrance gallery differ considerably from those at the sides. These sculptures on the capitals supply the place usually occupied by frieze and cornice in Grecian architecture; and in other examples plain painted surfaces occupy the same space. Above this springs the roof, semicircular in general section, but somewhat stilted at the sides, so as to make its height greater than the semidiameter. It is ornamented even at this day by a series of wooden ribs, probably coeval with the excavation, which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the roof is not a copy of a masonry arch, but of some sort of timber construction which we cannot now very well understand.

Immediately under the semidome of the apse, and nearly where the altar stands in Christian churches, is placed the shrine, in this instance a plain dome slightly stilted on a circular drum. As there are no ornaments on it now, and no mortices for wood-work, it probably was originally plastered and painted, or may have been adorned with hangings, which some of the sculptured representations would lead us to suppose was the usual mode of ornamenting these altars. It is surmounted by a terminal the base of which is similar to the one shown on woodcut No. 13, and on this still stand the remains of an umbrella in wood, very much decayed and distorted by age.

Opposite this is the entrance, under a gallery exactly corresponding with our roodloft, consisting of three doorways, one leading to the centre, and one to each of the side aisles, and over the gallery the whole end of the hall is open, forming one great window, through which all the light is admitted. This great window is arched in the shape of a horseshoe, and exactly resembles the ornaments on the upper part of the terminal found at Ajunta (woodcut 13), and the arches which surmount the niches in the hall of the oldest monastery cave at Ajunta, to be described hereafter. The outer porch is considerably wider than the body of the building, being 52 ft. wide, and is closed in front by a screen composed of two stout octagonal pillars, without either base or capital, supporting what is now a plain mass of rock, but was once ornamented by a wooden gallery which formed the principal ornament of the façade. Above this a dwarf colonnade or attic of four columns between pilasters admitted light to the great window, and this again was surmounted by a wooden cornice or ornament of some sort, though we cannot now restore it, as only the mortices remain that attached it to the rock.

Still further in advance of this stands the lion-pillar, in this instance

a plain shaft with 32 flutes, or rather faces, surmounted by a capital not unlike that at Kesariah (woodcut No. 3), but in this instance it supports four lions instead of one. Another similar pillar probably stood on the opposite side, but it has either fallen or been taken down to make way for the little temple that now occupies its place.

The absence of the wooden ornaments, as well as our ignorance of the mode in which this temple was finished laterally, and the porch joined to the main temple, prevents us from judging of the effect of the front in its perfect state. But the proportions of such parts as remain are so good, and the effect of the whole so pleasing, that there can be little hesitation in ascribing to such a design a tolerably high rank among architectural compositions.

Of the interior we can judge perfectly, and it certainly is as solemn and grand as any interior can well be, and the mode of lighting the most perfect-one undivided volume of light coming through a single opening overhead at a very favourable angle, and falling directly on the altar or principal object in the building, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity. The effect is considerably heightened by the closely set and thick columns that divide the three aisles from one another, as they suffice to prevent the boundary walls from ever being seen, and, as there are no openings in the walls, the view between the pillars is practically unlimited.

All these peculiarities are found more or less developed in all the other caves of the same class in India, varying only with the age and the gradual change that took place from the more purely wooden forms of this cave to the lithic or stone architecture of the more modern ones. This is the principal test by which their relative ages can be determined, and at the same time proves incontestably that the Karli cave was excavated very shortly after stone came to be used as a building material in India.

Karli' at the head for seven most beautiful, or There are many other

The following list, of which I have placed the sake of comparison, includes I believe the at least best known, examples of this sort. cave-temples scattered through the various groups of the western ghâts, but none of them have either been drawn or described in such a manner as to allow of their being classified or even enumerated in such a work as this.

As will be seen from this list, the next in age and size to Karli is

The other six I have myself visited and measured.

the oldest cave at Ajunta.' These two caves are very similar, except that at Ajunta all the pillars are plain octagons, without either capital or base. They are stuccoed, and painted with figures of Buddha and of various saints. Above the pillars is a plain space or belt, corresponding in position to the triforium of a medieval cathedral, ornamented with painting or with sculpture illustrative of the purposes to which the temple was dedicated. Over this rose the roof, somewhat flatter than the Karli one, but like it adorned with wooden ribs; in

this instance, however, these have perished, and left only their marks and fastenings behind. But in the aisles these wooden ribs are represented by stone ones, carved out of the solid rock. This would seem to indicate an advance in style, and consequently more modern date; but the greater simplicity of other parts precludes the idea of any great difference in age. section will be understood by the annexed woodcut, which also explains the arrangement of all the caves, and may give us some notion of the exterior form of the buildings which these caves imitate. The next cave, No. 9, is nearly similar to this, except in size, and has less appearance of age than its neighbour; it is, however, very much ruined, and both of them have lost their façades, from the precipice having fallen away, in the face of which they were excavated.

Its

No. 19, at Ajunta, is one of the most perfect of the class in India, having been excavated before the style had become utterly degenerate, but after all the essential parts of the style had so long and so frequently been repeated in stone, that they had lost all the raw appearance of their wooden originals, and had in consequence become, strictly speaking, architectural features.

No. 26, though very similar to this in many respects, was excavated at too late a period to retain much purity of style, and all its details are coarse and clumsy when compared with the last; while its sculptural arrangements show such a degenerate tendency towards modern Hinduism, as to denote that the style was at its last gasp when this cave was commenced.

The well-known cave, the Viswakarma, at Ellora, occupies an intermediate place between these two. In it the style has become so completely a stone one, that, had we no knowledge of the earlier wooden originals, we might be led to suppose that many of the forms and details arose from the exigencies of construction and vaulting. It is

The tee of its dagoba is drawn, woodcut No. 13; a view of its interior is given in the

Illustrations of the Rock-cut Temples of
India, plate iii.