Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 207, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1910 — The World’s Wonders [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The World’s Wonders

X STRANGE THINGS FOUND IN VARIOUS x. * PORTIONS OF THE EARTH

Most Famous Buddhist Cave

Near Lonauli, two hours’ journey from Bombay, is a famous Buddhist cave temple hewn out of the solid rock at Karli in the Western Ghauts. Its architecture strangely resembles the Gothic. This is considered one of the largest and most complete specimens off Buddhist “chaitya” in India, and its excavation is ascribed to the Maharajah Bhutia, B. C. 78. As one enters its cool dark recesses it strikes one as being not unlike a Christian church in form, consisting of a nave and side aisles terminating in an apse. Fifteen pillars separate the nave from the aisle, and the capital of each is chly ornamented with the figures of two elephants bearing a man and a woman or two female forms. Under the semi-dome and where the altar stands in our churches is the “daghoba,” a dome-like structure. This was originally Intended to hold relics, and the outside was formerly ornamented and draped and surmounted with a huge wooden umbrella, of which little n °* r ®“ al &s. The interior of the cave is grand and solemn and the mode or lighting perfect, an undivided volume of light coming through a single opening overhead and falling on the altar, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity. The entrance consists of three doorways and the whole end of the hall is open, forming one great Window bf horseshoe shape.