TRAVEL
Among ancient caves and chaityas at Bhaje
Abhilash Gaur

SHAM Kaur reached Bhaje before I did. She had the advantage of radio waves. An FM station in Pune was beaming her to Bhaje, Karle, Bedse, Lonavla, Khandala besides every street in Pune even as I bounced to the end of the road in an auto.

My watch showed 8:50 a.m. The sun had just risen above the hill and a couple was washing clothes at a spring. I waited for Daler Mehndi to finish serenading Sham Kaur before walking towards the steps leading up to the ancient caves of Bhaje.

The caves stood somewhere up a wide and gently sloping hillside but they were not visible from the base. I started climbing, keeping time with the splash-splash of clothes being washed below. By the eighth or ninth landing the loudest noise was of my own breathing. I paused to look at the village below. It had shrunk to about a hand's span.

Twenty minutes later, I stood at the top, panting before a locked gate. It was a moment filled with awe and disappointment. Before me, that is beyond the gate, was the most beautiful chaitya (prayer hall) I had ever seen. The simple grace of its arched front restrained all the expletives I had intended for luck. In desperation, I made to scale the gate but Saddu came running to save me the effort and embarrassment.

Saddu Madhu Dage cleans and maintains the Bhaje caves. He lets visitors in for five-rupee tickets and reprimands those who try to vandalise his home of 30 years. In him, the Archaeological Survey of India seems to have found a winning deal.

Flashing a toothy grin, Saddu tried to tell me something in rustic Marathi, to which all I could say was, "Hindi, Hindi." Satisfied that neither of us could understand the other, we walked up to the chaitya grinning by turns.

Saddu had been cleaning the stupa deep inside the chaitya when I arrived. After issuing me a ticket and another wide grin, he went back to work. Left alone, I sat down on the rocky surface before the massive cave to study it in detail.

The Bhaje caves are amongst the oldest monasteries excavated by monks of the Hinayana order. By one estimate, they were carved around 200 BC. Their design is credited to artists from North India, which explains some of their peculiar features, such as the wooden rafters supporting the chaitya's ceiling.

Those rafters were not needed. To the best of my knowledge, naturally formed rock is much stronger than concrete. Therefore, there never was any danger of the roof collapsing. But suppose there had been, could a few arched members of wood support the thousands of overlying tonnes? Impossible.

One plausible explanation for the use of wood, therefore, is that the artists from the north were used to creating wooden chaityas. So, while working in stone in the Deccan, they naturally carried over some of the style elements. Similar rafters are also seen in the chaitya at nearby Karle. But more on that another time!

If the wooden members supporting the ceiling were intriguing, I found the plan of the entire cave ingenious. Normally, the idea of entering a room or hall involves contraction and expansion of space as one moves through a doorway. But in Bhaje, the architect did away with this sequence by not creating a front wall. The chaitya is like an arched tunnel blocked at the far end. An illusion of diminishing dimensions is however created due to the length of the hall.

There's another notable feature of the chaitya: it has no image of the Buddha. This is in keeping with Hinayana thinking and Buddha's own teachings. The few outlines that one does see above the entrance depict celestial beings but these have been eroded by centuries of rain.

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I climbed the steps leading into the chaitya and walked up to the stupa at its far end. Saddu had done a thorough job of cleaning it. 

In fact, the entire hall was very clean. The stupa had a white block above it which looked like it had been added later. Rows of pillars, beginning on either side of the entrance, ran down the hall to meet behind the stupa. In all, there were 28 pillars—all of them octagonal.

By the time I finished inspecting the chaitya, the sun had climbed high and the hills and fields had turned a golden yellow. Shivaji's Lohgarh fort beckoned me from the opposite hill but I still had to see the other caves of Bhaje.

Almost all the other caves in Bhaje are viharas or living quarters for monks. The chaitya is placed slightly left of centre so most of these cells are on the right. I started by looking into the viharas above the chaitya.

These rooms opened into a central hall, which might have served for assemblies other than prayer meetings. Perhaps, they were quarters of monks higher up in the monastic order. I could only guess as the Archaeological Survey of India had not put up any information about the caves.

Moving to the viharas on the right nearly brought me into contact with creatures I had only seen in pictures before: scorpions. They were present on the floors and walls of all the cells. God forbid that I should ever become a monk!

One of the caves, actually it is just a hollow in the rock face, had a curious cluster of stupas. There were five stupas inside this 'cave' and nine lined up outside it. 

The three at the back of the cave diminished in size from left to right while the two in front of them were equal in size. The nine stupas in the outer row also diminished in size from left to right.

The only other interesting cave in the complex was the third from the right. It had a few carvings which could be interpreted as Indra riding his elephant Airavat and Surya riding his chariot drawn by four horses. 

But this depiction of Hindu gods in a Buddhist complex was not explained anywhere.

When I returned to the chaitya after inspecting the caves, Saddu was busy handing out tickets to a family. Seeing me leave, he came over grinning. I started to ask him directions to the Lohgarh fort but realised there was no point. I took leave of him with my best grin!