Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/219

CHAP. VI. NASIK VIHARAS. 185 little more than a generation, and may be largely due to work- men from a different province. The pillars in the verandah of cave No. 8 (Woodcut No. 103), are so similar to those in the great Karle chaitya, that we might hesitate to ascribe any very lengthened interval between them ; indeed we find inscriptions at Karle of the same Ushavadata and his wife Dakhamitra, the daughter of Nahapana, 103. Pillar in Nahapana Cave, Nasik. (From a Photograph.) 104. Pillar in GautamJputra Cave, Nasik. (From a Photograph.) who give two cells in the verandah of this cave in the years A.D. 1 19-123 ; l and as the inscriptions chiefly record endowments, this cave may have been excavated, for aught we know, a century or more before these donations were made and recorded. There 1 The dates in Ushavadata's inscriptions are 41, 42, and 45 ; and as Nahapana, inajunnar inscription, gives the date 46, the latter must have been alive at the earlier dates ; and as the Kshatrapas use the Saka. era, the Nasik dates correspond to A.D. 119, 120 and 123.