It is a hot unforgiving summer in Mumbai – I am in Andheri, a bustling hub in the west of the gigantic cosmopolis, but here in the basalt, rock-cut cocoon of the Mahakali caves, time seems to have been trapped in a bubble. The skies are silent, blue, and only interrupted by the flight of a coppersmith barbet. The red gulmohur trees sway gently, and the rocks feel surprisingly cold inside the caves - in the darkened silence all around, they seem to be meditating exactly as their inmate monks would have, about 2000 years back. On first glance, these 19 Buddhist caves seem uninteresting, belittled by the high-rises of the 21st century all around – there seems nothing spectacular, but closer inspection will reveal minimalist viharas (cells where Buddhist monks used to meditate, and incidentally the term that gave the state of Bihar its name), a slightly larger chaitya (prayer hall where the monks would congregate) containing a pockmarked stupa (hemispherical structure that would in larger ancient monasteries contain relics) – the triumvirate that completes any Buddhist monastery. Further scrutiny will reveal dilapidated rock - cut sculptures standing as silent sentinels over two millennia since the times of Ashoka, cisterns for rain-water harvesting and inscriptions in Pali, a language older than Sanskrit. It was in this time bubble of the Mahakali or Kondivite caves (apparently named after a Kali temple nearby with the stupa often mistaken for a shiva-linga) that I first realised that, besides the pinnacle in Ajanta and Ellora, there were scores of rock-cut caves strewn all over the Deccan, many to be found right here within the city. The Mahakali caves were, in a way, a revelation or a prologue to my quest to further understand more of these rock-cut shards of history that lie unobtrusively in Mumbai and beyond. Patronage from Buddhist and Hindu rulers: As in any city from ancient times, Mumbai (or Bombay from a few decades back), has multiple layers as well, though these are perhaps not as celebrated as Delhi or Ahmedabad. Walking back in time before the Parsees, the British, the Portuguese, the Muslim rulers of the Bahmanis and the Gujarati sultanate, we can trace Bombay to be the land of seven islands. In ancient times, Bombay was recorded by Greek geographer Ptolemy as Hepta-nesia or seven islands – it was only in the 19th century that these islands were merged together by the British along with the islands of Salcette and Trombay to form the modern day city, the moniker ‘Bombay’ already provided by the Portuguese three centuries earlier to mark the archipelago as a ‘good bay’ or bom bahia in their tongue. In the 3rd century BC though, these swampy islands along with the Deccan was a part of the mighty Ashokan empire – further validated by the existence of Ashokan edicts near the present day Nalasopara, which was once known as Sopara, and was one of the largest ports on the western coast of the peninsula trading with Arabia and Egypt. Trade flourished from Sopara and its wealth ensured constant patronage for Buddhism and later on Hinduism, which in turn financed the development of multiple monasteries and cave temples. Over centuries, multiple rulers – the Satavahans, the Vakatakas (patrons of Ajanta), the Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas (patrons of Ellora) among many others flourished in the Deccan, some supporting the Buddhist Sangha, some the Brahmanical Hindus – nonetheless contributing to the many cave temples of the Deccan. Ayan The Cave Temples of Bombay and beyond Breathtaking Cave Temples In India : A TO Z INDIA ● JANUARY 2023 ● PAGE 24 By Ayan e mail: [email protected]