Vihara

“ Great Vihara, at Bagh.
(From a Plan by Dr. Impey.)
The shala connected with this vihara measures 94 ft. by 44 ft., and the two are joined together by a verandah measuring 220 ft. in length, adorned by twenty free-standing pillars. At one time the whole of the back wall of this gallery was adorned with a series of frescoes, equalling in beauty and in interest those of Ajunta. As in those at Ajunta, the uninitiated would fail to trace among them any symptoms of Buddhism as generally understood. The principal subjects are processions on horseback, or on elephants. ”

“ As in the monasteries of another faith, in the far west, the Buddhist Viharas, even during their pathetic decadence, were too often seething hot-beds of rivalry and inward strife, thinly whitewashed with an outer coat of obedience to precept and renunciation of the fivefold clinging to the world. In the Vihara, a man desirous of attaining to Nirvâna had not only his own weakness to conquer, his own nature to strengthen ”

“ At dawn—which was early enough at this time of year—the whole Vihara was roused by the clanging of a bell, which rang till the most persistent sleeper could no longer retain his drowsiness. Then monks and novices alike made the prescribed ablutions and put on the outer robe. After this came half an hour of meditation, each one sitting alone in his open cell, while masters of the day passed through the corridors at irregular intervals to make sure that meditation did not lapse into sleep. ”

“ Structural Viharas—Bengal and Western Vihara Caves—Nassick, Ajunta, Bagh, Dhumnar, Kholvi, and Ellora Viharas—Circular Cave at Junir.
Structural Viharas.
We are almost more dependent on rock-cut examples for our knowledge of the Viharas or monasteries of the Buddhists than we are for that of their Chaityas or churches: a circumstance more to be regretted in this instance than in the other. In a chaitya hall the interior is naturally the principal object, and where the art of the architect would be principally lavished. ”

“ Throughout this work the term “Vihara” is applied only to monasteries, the abodes of monks or hermits. It was not, however, used in that restricted sense only, in former times, though it has been so by all modern writers. Hiouen Thsang, for instance, calls the Great Tower at Buddh Gaya a vihara, and describes similar towers at Nalanda, 200 and 300 feet high, as viharas. The ‘Mahawanso’ also applies the term indiscriminately to temples of a certain class, and to residences. ”

“ VERANDAH, CAVE No. 21.—AJUNTA.
RETURNING to the southern end, the next Cave (No. 21) is a large Vihara 51 ft. 6 in. by 52 ft. 6 in. but not quite finished, the pillars of the sanctuary being merely blocked out. ”

“ THE second Cave from the north end is a twelve-pillared Vihara, of which is given a plan at page xviii. It is in very good preservation, and the paintings, particularly on the pillars, are tolerably perfect. In the sanctuary there is a statue, of course of Buddha, and there is a chapel on each side of it, at the end of the aisles. In the one on the north are two most portly, fat figures, a male and female; in the south one, two male figures occupying a like position. ”

“ The gloom of the interior was thus available to the priests for the production of effects which may be imagined."
Emerging from the temple, we saw the Buddhist monastery (Vihara) , which is a series of halls and cells rising one above the other in stories connected by flights of steps, all hewn in the face of the hill at the side of the temple. We sat down on a fragment of rock near a stream of water with which a spring in the hillside fills a little pool at the entrance of the Vihara. "Tell me something of Gotama Buddha," I said. ”

“ THE principal Vihara attached to this Chaitya is that called Dehr warra, one of the largest excavations of its class, being 110 ft. deep by 70 ft. in width, including the side recesses. Unfortunately it is much too low to have a good effect architecturally, and its details are infinitely inferior to those of Ajunta of the same age. ”

“ In this jungle there stood an old structure, surrounded by broken walls. Archaeologists could easily detect that it had first been a Buddhist vihara, then a Hindu temple and then a Mohammedan mosque. Now it seemed to have been finally converted into something else again. ”

“ Next to this is one called the Great Kacheri; but it is only a six-celled vihara, with a hall about 25 ft. square, encumbered by four pillars on its floor; and near the chaitya above alluded to is a similar hall, but smaller and without cells. At Kholvi there is nothing that can correctly be called a vihara at all. There is, indeed, one large hall, called Bhim’s home, measuring 42 ft. by 22 ft.; but it has no cells, and is much more like what would be called a shala at Bagh than a vihara. The others are mere cells, of no architectural importance. ”

“ It is a two-storeyed vihara, and one of the finest here, though it would not be considered remarkable anywhere else. Another, of which a representation is given in my ‘Rock-cut Temples,’ plate 19, represents Avalokiteswara with ten heads,—the only instance I know of in India, though it is common in Thibet in modern times. [198] The others are generally mere cells, or natural caverns slightly improved by art, and hardly worthy of illustration in a general history, though a monograph of these caves would be a most valuable addition to our scanty stock of knowledge.
Dhumnar and Kholvi. ”

“ There is nothing to fix with certainty the age of this Cave. It is certainly later than the Viharas last described, and cotemporary with some of those which follow, while there are analogies and other circumstances which cannot be detailed here, which render it probable that it was excavated about the eighth century of our era. ”

“ There was, however, I believe, another form of Vihara even less capable of being repeated in the rock. It was pyramidal, and is the original of all the temples of southern India. Take, for instance, a description of one mentioned both by Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang, [160] though neither of them, it must be confessed, ever saw it, which accounts in part for some absurdities in the description:—“The building,” says Fa Hian, “has altogether five storeys. The lowest is shaped into the form of an elephant, and has 500 stone cells in it ”

“ According to this arrangement, the oldest group consists of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, and the series becomes more and more modern very nearly in the exact ratio on which it diverges on either hand from this central group. Thus the group from No. 13 to No. 19 comes next in age, and beyond these the northern Caves, Nos. 1 to 7; and the southern, Nos. 20 to 27, are probably cotemporary or nearly so. The earliest Viharas, Nos. 11 and 12, were probably excavated in the century which preceded the Christian era—they may be older; while the excavation of No. ”

“ The upheaval in the North Atlantic which raised this island upon which we now walk caused a corresponding depression and sank once more that great sandy waste, once the desert, now the Sahara Sea, which has vastly improved transit in North Africa; it raised and drained the Congo Valley and all the low-lying forest and morass land which made Central Africa so deadly to the white man. ”

“ A river like the Nile, lower Volga, Irtysh or Indus, rising in highlands of abundant rainfall but traversing an arid or desert land, acquires added importance because it furnishes the sole means of water travel and of irrigation. The Nile has for ages constituted the main line of intercourse between the Mediterranean and Equatorial Africa. The Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and the Niger where it makes its great northern bend into the Sahara near Timbuctoo,646 attest the value to local fertility and commerce inherent in these rivers of the deserts and steppes. ”

“ And westward, we know, it rolls onward like the sea, through the width of Africa, through the Sahara, reaches Timbuktu, the secret city, and the jungle takes up the land, and rolls to the Gold Coast, where the Atlantic booms in great, curling surf.
And south of us is Africa, too, the crags of Abyssinia, the great belt of Rhodesia, and the plains where Kaffirs dig for diamonds, and the great veldts the Boers have tamed, and Table Mountain, that old navigators know, and the cape they have called Good Hope. And southward and eastward is the pearly haze of Madagascar. ”

“ Therefore the descent from the equatorial plateau of Africa down to the Atlantic littoral means a drop in culture also, because the various elements of civilization which for ages have uninterruptedly filtered into Sudan from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, have rarely penetrated to the western rim of the highland, and hence never reached the coast. Moreover, this steaming lowland, from the Senegal River to the Kamerun Mountains, has been a last asylum for dislodged tribes who have been driven out by expanding peoples of the plateau. ”

“ On the east lies the Gulf of Persia, which, by the river Euphrates, reaches the heart of Western Asia; while the island of Ormus forms a stepping-stone from its coast to that of India.
On the west the Red Sea protects it from the invasion of the Ethiopian nations; placing it in communication with Egypt and Abyssinia: while on the south the continent of Africa, at the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, visibly invites the natives of Arabia to visit its coasts. ”

“ And they say, too, that after it arriveth at the other Mauritania Caesariensis, which is not a sandy land, it cometh up over the ground and there maketh another lake, in the which breed those same animals and creatures which breed in the other; and therefore men believe that all this water cometh from the Nile, and that after it floweth out from there and cometh to the other sandy districts which are beyond Mauritania and towards Ethiopia, it again disappeareth and runneth for the space of twenty days underground till it is within the land of Ethiopia. ”

“ Travellers have indeed penetrated a short distance from the western coast into the interior, in some parts between the latitude of the Niger and the latitude of the extreme northern boundary of the Cape settlement: and a very little is known respecting some small portions of the districts closely adjoining to the eastern coast; but the whole of central Africa is still unexplored, and presents difficulties and dangers which it is apprehended will not be speedily or easily overcome. To the north of the Niger lies the Sahara, or Great Desert ”

“ In Tripoli my eyes were made sore by the glare of the Libyan wastes and their dust blew across the Nile valley during my stay in Egypt and the British Sudan. The Arabian desert was on both sides of us as we came down the Red Sea and its sands several times covered the ship. We had the rockiest of all deserts in southern Arabia while that of Italian Somaliland was not any better.
Here at Mombasa we are in the luxuriant tropics where the surroundings remind me of Solomon’s song. All nature seems joyful. ”

“ By the end of the 18th century British enterprise had almost entirely displaced that of other nations on the Niger coast. But the principal trade of all Europeans was still in slaves. After the abolition of the slave-trade in the 19th century palm oil formed the staple article of commerce, and the various streams which drain the Niger coast near the mouth of the great river became known as the “Oil Rivers.” The opening up of the interior was in the meantime promoted, chiefly by the efforts of British travellers and merchants. ”

“ Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months' exploration, during which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia, including the Atbara, Settite, Royan, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Dinder, and the Blue Nile, The interest attached to these portions of Africa differs entirely from that of the White Nile regions, as the whole of Upper Egypt and Abyssinia is capable of development, and is inhabited by races having some degree of civilization; while Central Africa is peopled by a race of savages, whose future is more problematical. ”

“ In regard to the population, as well as its geographical character, Africa naturally divides itself into two great portions, north and south of the mountains of Kong and the Jebel el Komar, which give rise to the waters of the Senegal, the Niger and the Nile. To the north of this line, Africa is ruled, and partially occupied by foreign races, who have taken possession of all the fertile districts, and driven the aboriginal population into the mountains and deserts of the interior. ”

“ The "Dark Continent" is entirely destitute of the great estuaries and broad arteries giving access in the New World from the Atlantic seaboard almost to the foot of the Andes. The comparative absence of navigable waters, of islands and good harbours, combined with the great extent of desert wastes, has mainly contributed to exclude Africa from the general life of the commercial world.
All the great rivers — Nile, Congo, and Niger — are interrupted by cataracts and rapids, which cut off from outward intercourse populous regions whose fluvial systems ramify over many hundred millions of acres. ”

“ Here may be said to begin the great delta of the Niger, which, extending along the coast for about 120 m., and 140 or 150 m. inland, forms one of the most remarkable of all the swampy regions of Africa. The river breaks up into an intricate network of channels, dividing and subdividing, and intercrossing not only with each other but with the branches of other streams, so that it is exceedingly difficult to say where the Niger delta ends and another river system begins. ”

“ The great river flowing from west to east, whose crocodiles showed it to be the Nile, must have been the Niger. The ancients knew middle Ethiopia to be a country watered by lakes and streams: Strabo (xvii. 3) tells us that "some suppose that even the Nile-sources are near the extremities of Mauritania." Hence, too, the Nilides, or Lake of Standing Water in Pliny (v. 10) . For the most part they made a great central river traverse the northern continent from west to east, whereas the Arabian geographers of the middle ages, who were followed by the Portuguese, inverted the course. ”