Chaitya

Form

The developed chaitya hall is apsidal: a long nave with a rounded end, separated from side aisles by rows of columns that continue round the apse to form a circumambulation path. A stupa stands in the apse, and the entrance wall carries a large horseshoe-arched window that lights the interior and throws the stupa into relief.

The ceiling is barrel-vaulted, and in the earlier examples ribs were carved in stone or fitted in wood in direct imitation of timber construction — the surviving wooden ribs at Karla are the clearest instance of a rock-cut architecture copying a vanished built one.

Sites

The great rock-cut chaityas are in the Western Ghats: Bhaja, Bedsa, Kondane, Karla, Kanheri, Ajanta and Ellora among them. Karla, of the first or second century CE, is the largest and best preserved, its hall some 38 metres deep with a screen of columns and paired elephant capitals.

The excavations cluster along the trade routes running from the western ports to the Deccan interior, and their donative inscriptions record merchants, guilds, and traders from far afield — evidence that the monastic establishments were funded by commerce.

Development

Chaitya halls change over time. The earliest have plain octagonal columns and a stupa without image; later examples add ornate capitals, sculptured facades and, eventually, a Buddha image carved on the stupa itself, which marks the shift from aniconic to iconic representation.

The horseshoe arch of the chaitya window became one of the most persistent motifs in Indian architecture, surviving as the gavaksha or kudu on Hindu temples for a thousand years after the halls themselves ceased to be excavated.