114 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
as the old disused Cave Number One at Elephanta — a long verandah-like chaitya cave which evidently held a circular dagoba on a square altar. The sculptures as well as the plans of the later monasteries, according to Fergusson, appear to be char- acterised by excessive duplication. The architecture associated with them seems to have been extraordinarily mixed and unrestrained in character. Amongst the leafage of pillar-capitals occur hundreds of little Buddhas. But it would have been obvious that these were late examples, even if Fergusson had not already announced that opinion. The main chamber of each monastery seems to have been a hall or court, either square or circular, in the middle of which stood an altar surmounted by a dagoba. Round this the walls were broken up into quantities of small niches or chapels, each one containing its image, and the whole decorated to excess. Regarding this as representing theoretically the vihara surrounding a dagoba of earlier days, Fergusson is very properly struck with astonishment by the phenomenon. In no Buddhist monument in India of which he knows, he says, have the monks ever been thrust out of the cells to make way for images. If he had not been told what the plans were and where they came from, he would unhesitatingly have pronounced them to be from Jain monasteries of the ninth and tenth centuries. From architectural considerations he thinks that the classical influences seen here must have culminated at and after the
