120 NORTHERN OR INDO-ARYAN STYLE. BOOK Vl. long previously, though we may fairly assume that it had been erected at least as early as, if not before, the reign of Vikram- aditya (655 to 680 A.D.). Indeed, comparing it with the temple of Papanatha at Pattadakal (Woodcut No. 323) we are at once struck by the more ancient style of the features of this, and would be quite prepared, on fair evidence, to ascribe it to the beginning of the /th century or soon after. When the drawings made by the Archaeological Survey of the temples of this district 1 are completely published, they will, no doubt, throw immense light on the early history of this style. 1 As the case now stands, however, the principal interest centres in the caves of Badami, which being the only Brahmanical caves known that have a positive date upon them, they give us a fixed point from which to reason in respect of other series such as we never had before. BRAHMANICAL ROCK-CUT TEMPLES. Although the structural temples of the Badami group 2 in Dharwar are of such extreme interest, as has been pointed out above, they are surpassed in importance, for our present purposes at least, by the rock-cut examples. At Badami there are three caves, not of any great dimensions, but of singular interest from their architectural details and sculptures, and more so from the fact that one of them, No. 3, contains an inscription with an undoubted date upon it. There are, as pointed out above, innumerable Buddhist inscriptions on the western caves, but none with dates from any well- ascertained era, and none, unfortunately, of the Brahmanical caves at Elura or elsewhere have inscriptions that can be fully deciphered, and not one with a date on it. The consequence is, that the only mode by which their ages could be approxi- mated was by arranging them in sequences, according to our empirical or real knowledge of the history of the period during which they were supposed to have been excavated. At Elura, for instance, it was assumed that the Buddhist preceded the Brahmanical excavations, and that these were succeeded by the Jaina ; and various local and architectural peculiarities 1 The works as yet published on this subject are the 'Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore,' fol., 100 plates, Murray, 1866; Burgess's 'Archaeological Report on the Belgam and Kaladgi Districts,' 1874; and Rea's 'Chalukyan Architecture,' 1896. 2 For architectural purposes the three places may be considered as one. Aihole is about 7 miles north-east of Pattadakal, and Pattadakal 8 miles east-north-east from B&dami. Fifteen miles covers the whole, which must have been in the 6th or 7th century a place of great importance, Vatapipura or BMami being then the capital of the Chalukyas 'Journal Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. iv. p. 9; 'Indian Antiquary,' vol. viii. p. 243-
