Guhārāja Cave-Temples

Something has already been said on the caves and the mountains as providing the grandest of origins and evolutions of Temple-architecture in India. The caves are the ancient residences of the gods. Caves, like the banks of rivers, are our Tīrthas. Presence of gods is so strongly felt there that cave and god are one. The Vāyu Purāṇa XXXIX. 55 speaks of cave-dwelling of Guha, the Secret One (Kārtikeya) on the Visākha mountain. The god is very fond of living in caves. To these natural habitations of the gods have to be added, as places of worship, retreat and congregation other natural caves and also those cut into the rock for similar purposes. The Ajivikas, Jain sect and the Buddhists were the first to do it. Within Brahmanism which was passing through the Vedic ritualism and the solitary monasticism in the natural caves, the substitution of excavated caves for natural ones took time to evolve.

“The heterodox sects preceded the Hindus by many centuries in their interference with and transformation of nature. They had already achieved magnificent results in such large, aspidal [apsidal?] vaulted ‘churches’ as the cave-temple at Karli and in rock-cut monasteries like those at Nasik or Ajanta”.

The dated Ājivika caves in the Barbar hills, Bihar were excavated in the reign of Asoka, in the 3rd century B.C. The Brahmanical worship cut its entry into the rock near about 400 A.D. It has the shape of a small, flat roofed Garbhagṛha which was the most earliest ternple-plan what is called the Chādya-Prāsāda, Among the Gupta temples, a structural porch or maṇḍapam belonging to Udaigiri, Bhopal may be taken as the earliest Brahmanical rock-cut temple. It dates from the reign of Chandragupta-II, 382-401 A.D.

These early temple-plans as described in the Vāstu-śāstra like the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra enjoining to be built against the back wall of the pillared hall not only correspond to a Garbhagṛha cut deep into the rock and preceded by its maṇḍapa, but to my mind, they also must have given to the Jaiṇas and the Buddhists, the prototype for their rock-cut cave-temples.

“Garbha, Pāli ‘gabbha’, is also the name of rock-cut cells of the Buddhist monks connected with their large monastic halls. Such an establishment is called ‘navagabha Maṇḍapa’ (Karli cave inset., ‘Ep. Ind., XI, p. 119), if there are nine ‘gabha’ or cells; or also ‘paca-gabha maṇḍapa’ and ‘sattagabha maṇḍapa’, when their number is only 5 or 7 (Junnar cave inscriptions, pp. 131, 136). Any small room is finally called ‘gabha’, in Pāli texts and denotes various kinds of chambers or rooms (‘Cullavagga’, VI. 3-3.) which may be square or rectangular, etc. The use of terms such as ‘prāsāda’, or its equivalent ‘vimāna’; gabbha, and also ‘guhā’, cave (Cullavagga’, VI.1, 2) in civic architecture is also current in the Epics. “Dhātugarbha (dagabha) is the stūpa as receptacle or womb of the relics (dhātu) of the Buddha. The Buddhist rock-cut cells again had their equivalent in structural cells; these in stone buildings, such as are preserved in Gandhara were also used as shrines for a Buddhist image or a stūpa (Takht-i-Bahai). In this particular instance however they are not square, but rectangular, etc. and they have not flat roofs”. H.T. p. 170 f. n.—102.

With this general introduction in the context of this last type of the cave-temple, the Guhārāja, let us deal with it in more details of architecture and the crowning illustrations at renowned sites like Ellora and Mamallapura [Mamallapuram].

Guhārāja, King of Caves, is a name as suggestive as it is unique among the ever-increasing types or Jātis of temples enumerated and described in the texts like the S.S and A.P. the medieval compendiums of Indian Architecture. The name however occurs also as that of actual temples, such as ‘Kuraja’ (Guhārāja), Bir, Temple which is situated between Deogarh and Candpur in Central India. Kuhara or cave is a synonym of Śālā, or room in the Bhaviṣya-purāṇa (CXXX. 27) where the type of temple, called Meru, is described as having Kuharas. The Anand Pagoda, in Pagon, Burma, being a, (Ku) or cave has such Kuharas, ‘caves’ or halls in the four directions radiating from a massive centre. The Burmese name for structural brick temple is (Ku) which is only an imitation of our Vāstuśāstra tradition.

According to Utpala (commentary, Br. S. LV. 25) this temple-type has the shape of a cave. Its height, 32 cubits, follows the general rule, of being twice the width of the Prāsāda, and implies a superstructure as high as the walls of the Garbhagṛha.

Prof. Kramrisch however takes this temple-type represented in Burmese temples. She says:

“This King of caves, Guhārāja, whatever its actual shape was, shares part of its name with Burmese brick built temples.

“In Burma, brick-built temples with inner spaces are simply called ‘Ku’ or cave. One of the temples at Pagan bears the name Shwe Ku, Golden cave. The Burmese Glass Palace chronicle tells about the erection of the Ananda temple of Pagan, how King Kyanzittha [Kyansittha] requested eight Arhats to produce by their concentrated thought an image of the cave Nandamūla in the Gandhamādana. This they did and the King built a large Ku-Guhā, a ‘cave’, or temple in the likeness of the cave Nandamūla and called it Nanda. The name of the cave, which properly is the Garbhagṛha, appears here as that of the whole Prāsāda”. This may be one of the many frontier development of Hindu Art. From the interior off-shoots, however, the Cave-temples at Ellora, Elephanta and Mamallapura [Mamallapuram] may be regarded as the best representative monuments.