civ Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. £Oct. 1844. 



3. Absolute accuracy being essentially necessary in the drawings, and^the use of 

 Dollond's Camera Lucida ensuring that indispensable object, we sball transmit with- 

 out delay to the Government of each of tbe presidencies three of these instruments. 



We are, &c. 

 (Signed) John Shepherd, (Signed) Henry Alexander, 



,, Henry Willock, ,, Robert Campbell, 



W. H. C. Plowden, ,, H. Shank, 



,, J. W. Hogg, ,, John Masterman, 



,, John Loch, „ C. Mills, 



,, Russell Ellice, ,, W. H. Sykes. 



,, John C. Whiteman, 



London, 29t/t May, 1844. 



The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, to J. C. Melvill, Esq. 



14, Grafton Street, Bond Street, London, 8th April, 1844. 



Sib, — The Royal Asiatic Society have had before them at their late meetings, a 

 highly valuable and interesting paper on the Cave Temples of India, by James 

 Fergusson, Esq., a gentleman of great research and knowledge in Architecture, who 

 with a professional zeal worthy of all commendation, personally visited the most re- 

 markable specimens of those singular structures, as well in Behar and Cuttack, 

 where they are found in the earliest and most simple forms, as in the Western side 

 of the Peninsula, where the most highly wrought and ornamental examples are ex- 

 tant. It is the principal object of Mr. Fergusson's paper to classify those remarkable 

 structures according to the purposes for which they appear to have been designed, 

 the parties by whom they were executed, and the dates assigned to them. 



Mr. Fergusson is fully aware of the great value of the improved knowledge attain- 

 ed to in the reading of the ancient characters in which inscriptions are written on 

 the rocks and temples of India ; but he justly considers the ascertainment of a date, 

 by an inscription not to be conclusive as to the age of the excavation, as where the 

 character in which the inscription is written is more modern than the architectural 

 features of the structure. In such cases, it is probable that the inscription denotes 

 a new appropriation or use, rather than the original design or execution. He there- 

 fore applies to the examination of their age the test of architectural character, 

 according to certain principles which he states in his able paper. 



Mr. Fergusson is of opinion, that the earliest of the Cave Temples are the Buddhist, 

 which he divides into two great classes, the Viharus or Monastic, and the Chaitya 

 or Temple Caves. Among the most ancient Buddhist Caves, after those in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Gya and in Cuttack, he ranks a very remarkable series, which lying out 

 of the road ordinarily travelled, and being difficult of access, have been seldom 

 visited, and are little known, those of Ajunta in Berar. 



The first notice of these Caves is to be found in a paper by Lieutenant Alexander, 

 printed in the 2d volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. The 

 writer there remarks, (p. 365) : "In most of the Caves, to compensate for the want 

 of profuse entaille and sculptures are paintings in fresco, much more interesting, as 



