44

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

[FEBRUARY, 1873.

dhist caves that abound in the hills all round

have all, I believe, been recorded by Dr. Bhàu

the present city, and at about an equal distance

Dăji, and most of them by other people too. The next group of caves is called the Tulsi Lená,

from it.

This looks as if there had been some

where near its site an object serving as a centre to them all—e.g. a bazār where the monks could beg. The best-known is the group called the

and is situated about three miles south-west of

the town. They are, as far as I understand the matter, rather inferior to the Ganeśa Lena,

but in much the same style, and worth seeing in any case. The third group however, in the

Ganeśa Lena, situated south of the Kūkri, and about three miles from the city, in the

south-western face of the fort of Śiwner, presents

steep face of a hill which the Hindus call

something new.

Ganeśa Pahār, and the Musalmāns Takht-i-

Ganeśa and Tulsi caves were of stone, and hewn,

Sulaimān. The Sulaimān in question was not

as far as possible, out of the rock, generally with a lotus-head, those of this group appear to have been either of wood or of stone deliberately built up ; for they are quite gone, and nothing remains but the capitals in each case carved downwards from the lintel of living rock, and having a hole about one inch in diameter in the

the son of David, but a fakir who lived on

the top in former days.

This hill is the north

east point of the Hattakešwar range, to be

hereafter described. The cayes are cut in a ledge of hard rock on its north face, and are in two

groups, altogether about a dozen in number. The chief group contains one large vihāra about the size of a three-table billiard-room, one end

of which is now occupied by an image of Gana pati, or, as a pert young Brähman once put it in my hearing—“Yes; we have set up our Apollo there” .

This Apollo—not of Belvedere, nor

yet of Delos—gives to the hill and the caves the name of Ganeśa Pahār and Ganeśa Lena

respectively, and to the neighbouring camping ground that of Ganeśa Mal. He is rather a fashionable deity in Junnar, and in my time used to be an object of pilgrimage from con siderable distances. East of the large vihāra is a beautiful little chaitya, having pillars carved in the Kārlé style, but with more spirit and

execution.

The figures are

elephants

and tigers. The roof has horse-shoe ribs of stone, cut in the living rock; and this, with the supe riority of the carving, indicates, I should think, a later date than that of Kārlé,

The other caves

are not in any way specially remarkable, unless that one of them contains a spring of very good water, which the pujāris of Ganapatí try to pre vent chance visitors from drinking. There is a good flight of steps part of the way up to this group, and a rough path the rest of it. The other half of the Ganeśa Lená lies about half

a mile further east, in a gorge, and is remark able for the carving of one doorway (in a chaitya), and for the utter inaccessibility of some of the caves. Whether they were originally approached by means of ropes and ladders, or whether the steps have been destroyed by time, I cannot say. At any rate they are a great comfort to birds and bees. There are some inscriptions in these and the other caves, but they

For whereas the pillars of the

centre of the inferior face, as if to receive a

point or rivet. The shape, too, of the capitals differs, for these are carved in (so to speak) concentric squares. The remains of a similar pattern in red, yellow, black, and white fresco still remained in 1871 on the ceiling of the largest cave—a vihāra, not quite so big as that in the Ganeśa Pahár. The native legend, as usual, is that the five Pândus hewed out

the caves in a night in pursuance of some

bargain, that they parcelled out the work among them, and that he to whom this part of it fell was overtaken by morning, and left the pillars unmade. Who the lazy hero was, they cannot tell, but it was not Bhima, for we shall meet

with his handiwork further on.

In the north

east face of the fort are two more groups of caves, none of which are of any size. They are mostly small vihāras, with their fronts supported by lotus-headed stone pillars; and the pendant capital which I have described is not found, as far as I recollect, in any of them. In one, how ever, the same frescoed ceiling-pattern was in existence in my time. The last of the cave-hills is the Mán Móri, a long ridge lying east of the fort, and separated from it by a gap called the Bârao Khind. There are three small groups of caves in it, the chief

being that attributed to the hero Bhima, and called after him Bhima Sankar, These are not to be confused with the famous temple of Bhima

Śankar built by Nānā Fadnavis at the source of the river of that name. The top of this Män Möri hill is the site of a fakir’s shrine, with a cistern, said never to run dry ; and the same is the case with a similar shrine and cistern on an