Mahavellipore in the south, or excavated, as at Ellora and elsewhere, instead of built. But the sentiment is the same. In place of a single monastery with its chapel or cathedral, we find here a number of independent cells or groups of cells, and frequently a whole series of cathedral shrines. Apparently a given spot has remained a monastic centre during generation after generation. Dynasties and revolutions might come and go, but this would remain, untouched by any circumstance save the inevitable shifting of population and the final decay of its own spiritual fire.
In its decoration the abbey would reflect the art of the current epoch. In culture it would act as a university. In ideals it represented the super-social, or extra-civic conception of the spiritual equality and fraternity of all men. Its inmates were vowed to religious celibacy. And we may take it that the place of the abbey would always be at a certain distance from a city whose government was in sympathy with it.
Thus the city of Dhauli, under the Emperor Asoka and succeeding worshippers of Buddha, had Khandagiri at seven miles' distance as its royal abbey. The civic power was represented at Gaya : the monastic at Bodh-Gaya. Benares was the seat of Brahmans : Sarnath of monks. Elephanta was the cathedral-temple of a king's capital,[1] but Kenheri, on another island a few miles away, offers to us the corresponding monastery.
- ↑ And Elephanta is of considerably later date.
