We examined almost
every remarkable vihara of the so-called Buddhist temples, and
never met with one statue of Buddha which could not have been
added in a later epoch than the construction of the temple; it
does not matter whether it was a year or a thousand years later.
Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took
the opinion of Mr. Y---, who, as I said before, was an experienced
architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the
Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole,
pillars, decorations, and the general style of the temple; whereas
the statue of Buddha was an additional and discordant patch. Out
of thirty or forty caves of Ellora, all filled with idols, there
is only one, the one called the Temple of the Tri-Lokas, which
contains nothing but statues of Buddha, and of Ananda, his favourite
disciple. Of course, in this case it would be perfectly right
to think it is a Buddhist vihara.
Most probably, some of the Russian archeologists will protest
against the opinions I maintain, that is to say, the opinions of
the Hindu archeologists, and will treat me as an ignoramus,
outraging science. In self-defence, and in order to show how
unstable a ground to base one's opinions upon are the conclusions
even of such a great authority as Mr. Fergusson, I must mention
the following instance. This great architect, but very mediocre
archeologist, proclaimed at the very beginning of his scientific
career that "all the cave temples of Kanara, without exception,
were built between the fifth and the tenth centuries.
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