The Kanheri Caves

The second place I visited while in Bombay waiting to go further south was the Kanheri Caves which are rock-cut caves about 25 miles from the city located in what is now called the Sanjay Gandhi National Park though it wasn't a national park at the time of my visit in 1980. These caves (there are over 100 of them) are cousins to the better known Karla Caves, also in the state of Maharastra and also Buddhist in inspiration. The ones at Karla are believed to date in construction from the second century BC continuing up to the fifth AD. Now they are fairly remote but at the time they were created this area formed part of an important trade route that ran between the Arabian Sea and the Deccan, the great plateau that sprawls over the centre of India. Karla is significant because of its Chaitya which is a shrine or prayer hall. The decorated stupa and columns, now almost 2,000 years old, remain in an excellent state of preservation, and there are fine sculptures of Buddhas on elephants and what are called Mithuna couples, Mithuna being a Tantric concept representing the union of complementary forces that lies behind all creation.

The Great Chaitya

Elephant sculptures

Panel at the entrance to the hall

There is nothing quite as grand as this at Kanheri but it is still impressive. The caves are cut out of basalt, the hard dark rock also used in Egypt which seems to lend an air of mystery to the objects into which it is carved. Many of these caves were Buddhist viharas or monasteries and include a small stone platform serving as a bed for the monks. I once slept on something similar at an ashram and can vouch for the toughness of those ancient monks.

There is a Chaitya here too which is like the one at Karla though not quite as well preserved. When I visited it had the usual pungent odour of bat droppings but still managed to retain an atmosphere of peace and prayer.

 At the entrance to this hall there is a statue of the Buddha standing in a pose of upright meditation as below.

This turned out to have some local significance because while we were at the site we were told about a holy man living nearby who had acquired a reputation by practising a form of tapas or asceticism which involved standing up all the time. The Hare Krishna devotee with whom we were visiting the caves wanted to go and see him, and I went along too which involved, as far as I remember, a short trek into the surrounding jungle which looked something like this.

When we found the sadhu in a secluded part of the forest he was very friendly. He didn't speak English but there was an attendant with him who told us he had been doing this for 20 years, and had neither sat nor laid down for all that time. You may wonder how he slept but a rail about 3 feet high had been installed for him and he leant on that from time to time. I mentioned this incident in Meeting the Masters where I hinted I felt he was rather wasting his time, but who can say? He was obviously inspired by the prodigious feats of asceticism related in stories of yogis from the distant past, and though the past was a different time with different demands and practices, it may be that for some people spiritual benefits can come from extreme physical austerities and self-mortification. The root meaning of the word tapas is heat, and the idea is that tapas can burn away material desires and attachments while at the same time creating an inner energy akin to spiritual fire which can lead to liberation and enlightenment. The modern spiritual seeker does not really deny himself much and comforts himself for his lack of effort in that department by saying it is the mind not the body that should be disciplined. But disciplining the body is a form of disciplining the mind, and one which, taken to the extreme it was here, would be beyond most of us. So, perhaps this sadhu was standing up to be spiritually counted (if you'll forgive the pun) more than most of us.

When we returned to the cave complex we were told to look at cave 34 where there were paintings of the Buddha on the ceiling. The paintings were very faded and not much compared to the famous ones at Ajanta 250 miles away, but the best of them shown here is still striking with its graceful simplicity, all the more so considering it is 1500 years old.

Buddhism has long gone from India but this was the country of its birth, and the religion is Indian through and through. It may have absorbed characteristics from the various lands where it has been adopted, magic from Tibet, Taoist influences from China and even a kind of military quality from Japan, but the core idea of detaching oneself from the material world for entry into the spiritual peace of enlightenment is pure Indian. The Kanheri caves and others like them, of which there are many, bear witness to the age-old search for truth on the sub-continent.