Another excavated cave about a hundred years later is the magnificent prayer hall or Chaitya, at Karle in the Pune district. This too has been excavated from the living rock and is unparalleled for its lofty and elevated impression. The size is truly stupendous, 124'x46-1/2'x45'. With well proportioned great and bulky pillars, carrying capitals of great originality holding up a vaulted roof that has real rafters of timber inserted into it, a ribbing inherited and copied from wooden structure. The columns are strong and bulky, surmounted by sculptured capitals. In the far distance there is a stupa with a wooden umbrella on top and astonishingly the original wood has survived unharmed to this date. Chaitya Hall, Bhaja, Maharashtra The Buddhist Stupa is another form of architecture, comprising a hemispherical dome, a solid structure into which one cannot enter. The stupa is a glorified, beautified, enlarged funerary mound: what was once the resting place of the bo...
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