Kondana Caves

Kondana Caves Kondane Caves
Kondana Caves, Maharashtra
Location	Maharashtra, India
Coordinates	18°29′32″N 73°13′24″E / 18.49222°N 73.22333°E / 18.49222; 73.22333
Geology	Basalt

Kondana Caves are located in small village, Kondana, 33 km north of Lonavala and 16 km northwest of Karla Caves. This cave group has 16 Buddhist caves. The caves were excavated in first century B.C. The construction on wooden pattern is notabale. One can reach the cave by descending from Rajmachi village.

The cave only one inscription on the front of the Chaitya, which gives information about donors.

About four miles from the Karjat station, on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, and at the base of the old hill fort of Rajmachi, is the Kondane group of caves, first brought to notice in the 19th century by Vishnu Sastri, and soon after visited by Mr. Law, then collector of Thana. They are in the face of a steep scarp, and quite hidden from view by the thick forest in front of them. Water trickles down over the face of the rock above them during a considerable part even of the dry season, and has greatly injured them. So much so indeed that it is now difficult to determine whether they or the caves at Bhaja Caves are the earliest. They must be nearly, if not quite contemporary, and as they must have taken some time to excavate, their dates may overlap to some extent. The Vihara at Kondane certainly looks more modern, while the Chaitya, which is very similar in plan and dimensions to that at Bhaja, is so much ruined that it is impossible now to decide which may have been first completed.

They face north-west, and the first to the south-west is a Chaitya-cave of very considerable dimensions, being 66.5 feet from the line of the front pillars to the extremity of the apse, 26 feet 8 inches wide, and 28 feet 5 inches high to the crown of the arch. The nave in front of the dagoba is 49 feet in length by 14 feet 8 inches, and the dagoba 9.5 feet in diameter, with a capital of more than usual height, the neck representing the relic casket being, as at Bhaja, of double the ordinary height, and representing two coffers, one above the other, carved on the sides with the Buddhist rail pattern. The fillets that covered this are decayed, as is also the whole of the lower part of the dagoba.

The bases with the lower parts of all the thirty columns that surrounded the nave, as well as that of one of the two irregular columns that once ornamented the front, have also decayed, and positions only of most of them can now be ascertained. Between these two latter pillars a wooden screen or front originally filled the opening to a height of about 10 or 12 feet, in which were the doorways leading to the interior and it was fixed to them, as seems to have been the case with all the earlier caves. The Chaitya Cave at Bhaja and that at Kondane had similar fronts constructed in wood. The caves at Bedsa and Karle are apparently among the earliest, where these screens were carved in the rock instead of being erected in the more perishable material.