352 INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. 



part are found in the Bombay Presidency and immediately 

 adjoining districts, otters exist either singly or in groups both in 

 Bengal and Madras, but under forms as various as the localities are 

 distant from the typical examples of "Western India. Another 

 source of complexity arises from the caves being divided among 

 the three principal religions which prevailed in India during 

 the ages in which they were excavated. The oldest and most 

 extensive series belong to the Buddhist religion, whose votaries 

 were the first, and for long perhaps the only, cave excavators. 

 They were succeeded by the Brahmanical caves, when that faith 

 in its turn replaced the once dominant religion of the " mild 

 ascetic." A smaller, but hardly less interesting series of caves 

 belongs to the Jains, who at a later age sought to rival the 

 Brahmans in the magnificence of their rock-cut architecture. 

 Their ages, too, vary greatly. The oldest of all are the simple cells 

 excavated for the Buddhist monks during the reign of Asoka 

 (B.C. 263-225) or immediately after that date, in the granite rocks 

 of Behar, and the series extends down to the most modern Buddhist 

 caves at Ajanta or Aurangabad. probably as late as 700 A.D. The 

 Brahmanical caves overlap these by a hundred or a hundred and 

 fifty years, and may extend down to the tenth century, while the 

 Jaina excavations, commencing about the same time as the 

 Brahmanical were continued in the rock at Gwalior down to 

 the middle of the fifteenth century. 



Except in Mr. Fergusson's work on the rock-cut temples of 

 India, published in 1845,* no such general suiwey of the whole 

 subject had been previously attempted. Since then, however, new 

 series of caves have been discovered, inscriptions have been 

 deciphered, and generally such progress has been made, that a new 

 and greatly enlarged work became indispensable. The principal 

 caves described in Mr. Burgess's Vol. IV. are at Bhaja, Bedsa, 

 Kondane, ISTusik, Junnar. Kanheri, and Ajanta. The latter important 

 group of monasteries and temples had already occupied three • 

 chapters, and 35 illustrations in the work on the Cave Temples, 

 but the interest attaching to their varied architecture, sculptures, 

 inscriptions, and paintings, which exhibit so much of the history 

 of Indian art for a period of so many centuries, led Mr. Burgess 

 to present numerous additional details and descriptions in his fourth 



* Illustrations of the Rock-cut Temples of India: — 18 plates in tinted lithography 

 (folio), with an Svo. volume of test, plans, &c. London : Weale, 1845. 



