India Field Report #4
February 3, 2020
We went to the caves of Elantra and to the tiny Taj Mahal.
To call them caves is in some ways a misnomer.
They are actually carved out of the cliffside.
So they are manmade cavesI think originally there were natural caves here.
In India there is a rainy season and it rains so hard and so much that travel is impossible.
In the old days the Buddhist monks would stay in caves during the rainy.
Eventually, these sites became permanent and they carved out more and mor rock.
At Elantra there are two sites: one Buddhist and a short bus trip away are Jain caves.
The Jain caves have figures with different head gear than the Buddhist/Hindu caves.
They look more like the head dress of a Thai dancer, that is if you stripped the hanging ornamentation and left the central core.
The Elentra caves on the Buddhist side number sixteen and are generally three story affairs.
They appear to be pillared equally spaced rectangular units laid out in long horizontal rows.
Each level has row after row of column going back into the spcae for three or four rows.
At the end of each row is a carved sculpture standing in bas-relief.
In the center of the back rowis a chamber with a Buddha in it.
The main attraction at Elantra, which I forgot to mention is a temple carved out of the rock cliff. It is a large carved out square surrounded in balconies of rooms that go up for three and in some places four stories.
The entrance is flanked on either side of the courtyard by carved elephants. One of the elephants has lost its head and trunk. I was told by one of our travel companions when they were here thirty years ago that it was whole.
Apparently, rocks fell from above and decapitated the fellow.
The central area is made up of a large square temple and a smaller one connected together. The larger temple has a linga in it. The largest I have ever seen. I’m guessing two and a half to three feet in diameter.
There is also a four sided obelisk that rises to the height of the cliff top.
We then went to the caves at Ajanta. Similar idea, but all the caves are carved out of the cliff face and appear to be long horizontal condos with neatly formed pillared rectangular spaces retreating into the cliff for four rows. Two of the caves are carved as single recesses and look like naves of cathedrals with what appears to be ribbed vaulted
ceilings and where the altar should be is a huge round object, whose name I forget at the moment. Originally, these round objects would have held the sacred objects left by the Buddha, held in a small housing atop the round piece.
We then went on to the little Taj, known as Bibi-Ka-Maqbara.
I discovered if I put into Google “Little Taj” a whole bunch of places came up.
Built by the same folks that did the Taj, just a generation different.
That’s it for now. I’m days behind and these adventures seem miles and months away.
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