The ancient and medieval architecture of India: a study of Indo-Aryan civilisation

THE kArLE

CHAITYA-HOUSE

71

north

of India

was being transformed

into

the school

ofthe

Mahayana,

orGreaterVehicle.

The

magnificent

chaitya-house

at

Kirle, carved

in the

rocks

oftheWestern

Ghatsbetween

Bombay

and

Poona,though

not

the mostancient,

is typical

of the

best

architecturalwork

of the Hinayana

School in India.

Fergusson

dated it tenta-

tivelyaboutthe

first century

B.C.

Themain

work of excava-

tion may,

however, have

been begun

even as

earlyas Asoka's

Fig.30.—InteriorofHtnaydnaChaitya-house

atAjanli.

time

;

but some

of the figure sculpturewhich belongs tothe

Mahiyina

School must have been added several centuries

later.

The description givenabove of the structural chaitya-

houseswill

makeiteasyto

understandtheplanningofit(fig.

31).

In

front of the entrancewere the traditional pair of Vishnu

standards {dhwaja-stambhas), usuallyplacedinfrontofsttipas

ofgreat
sanctity or the

temples of Buddhism,

Jainism,

and

Brahmanism. Onlytheleftone,asixteen-sidedpillar(Pl.XVII),