This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
374
WINTER INDIA

lem zealots strove to destroy the carved figures, but one hardly notes these defects in presence of this greatest wonder of the Indian world, absolutely unique among architectural monuments. Patches of ocher and shreds of flower garlands remained from the last festival, the only suggestion of human touch or occupancy. One seemed to feel the presence of magic forces there, as if the Kailas had been turned to stone by some enchantment. It dazed one to consider that one mind could have conceived such a stupendous monument as this ex-voto of an eighth-century raja—his material expression of gratitude at his restoration to health by the neighboring springs.

The three-story Brahmanical temples were the next most amazing spectacle: gallery over gallery hewn in the cliff front and connected by curious arched passages and tunnels of later date, as in the Do Tal (two-story) and the Tin Tal (three-story) temples. The Das Avatar's main hall is cut one hundred and forty-three feet into the rock, forty-six massive pillars connecting the roof and floor. One Buddhist cave with a double gallery in the screen front, and an upper window opening to the plain, has a ribbed roof, and from so closely following the lines of the early chaitya halls of wooden construction, it is known as the Carpenter's Cave. There is a carved dagoba in the apse of its long hall, where the seated figure of Buddha and attendant figures in air are in the spirit of the best period of Buddhist art. There are storied viharas or monasteries near it, which, like this great chaitya, follow closely the