Nasik Caves

Start with the stone under your feet. It is dark basalt, rough and slightly warm by midday. It is worn smooth in the places where countless pilgrims have walked. Above you, a line of doorways opens into the face of the hill. Each one is a cool, shadowed room cut straight into solid rock. Pause here for a moment and catch your breath, because the climb is part of the story.

You are on Trirashmi hill, on the southern edge of Nashik. The caves here go by several names. Archaeologists call them the Nasik Caves. Locals usually call them Pandavleni, and some older sources use the name Trirashmi Leni, after the hill. The word leni simply means caves in Marathi, the language of this region. Together they form one of the oldest groups of Buddhist rock-cut monuments in western India.

Here is the first surprise. None of these rooms were built in the usual sense. Nobody carried stone up this slope and stacked it. Instead, workers started with the bare cliff and removed everything that was not a room. Every pillar, bench, and doorframe is part of the same single mass of rock. If the carvers made a mistake, they could not add stone back. They could only cut deeper.

The work began roughly two thousand years ago. Most scholars place the earliest caves around the second or first century before the common era. Carving continued, with long gaps, for several centuries after that. There are around two dozen excavations in all. Some are small cells, some are large halls. Most were made for Buddhist monks, who lived here during the monsoon season, when travel along the roads became impossible.

Now, about that local name. Pandavleni means the caves of the Pandavas. The Pandavas are the five heroic brothers of the Mahabharata, one of India's great epic poems. Legend says the brothers stayed here during their years of exile. It is a popular tale, and you will hear it often. But the caves themselves are Buddhist, and their inscriptions say nothing about the Pandavas. The name is folklore, layered on top of the history.

The real history is written on the walls — quite literally. These caves carry some of the most important inscriptions in early Indian history. They are written in Brahmi, an ancient script that is the ancestor of many modern Indian alphabets. The donors recorded their gifts so that their good deeds would be remembered. Because of that habit, historians can name kings, queens, merchants, and officials who paid for this work.

In one of the larger halls, usually counted as Cave 3, there is a famous inscription. It was set up by a queen mother named Gautami Balashri. She praises her deceased son, the king Gautamiputra Satakarni, of the Satavahana dynasty. The inscription was made during the reign of her grandson Vasishthiputra Pulumavi. The Satavahanas ruled much of the Deccan, the high plateau of central and southern India. Her text lists his victories in proud detail. It is a rare case where a royal woman speaks to us in her own voice, across two thousand years.

Another hall, often called Cave 10, carries the name of a rival family. Its inscriptions mention Ushavadata, a son-in-law of Nahapana. Nahapana was a ruler of the Western Kshatrapas, a dynasty with roots in Central Asia. So here is the second surprise. Two competing royal houses left their records on the same hillside. Read together, these walls show how power over this trade route changed hands.

And this was a trade route. Nashik sits on the Godavari River, one of the great rivers of peninsular India. Ancient roads linked this area to the ports on the western coast. Merchants travelled these routes with cloth, spices, and other goods. Many of the donors named in these inscriptions were traders and craftsmen. Their money helped turn a bare hill into a monastery.

One cave stands apart in shape. Cave 18 is a chaitya, which means a Buddhist prayer hall. Look at its front. The doorway rises into a tall horseshoe-shaped arch, a shape copied from older wooden buildings. Inside, a long hall leads to a stupa at the far end. A stupa is a rounded, dome-like monument that represents the Buddha. Monks walked slowly around it in prayer, always keeping it on their right.

The other caves are mostly viharas, or living quarters. Step inside one and notice the layout. A central hall is lined with small square cells. Each cell often has a stone bench that served as a bed. In the early caves, the Buddha is shown through symbols, not as a human figure. In some later caves, carved images of the Buddha appear. That change shows a shift in Buddhist practice over the centuries.

As you walk between the caves, watch for small details. There are water cisterns cut into the rock, which collected rain for the monks. There are carved railings and pillar capitals with animal figures. In some halls you can still see chisel marks on the ceiling. Look out from the doorways too. The view takes in the city, the highway, and the flat plain beyond. At the foot of the hill stands a memorial park to Dadasaheb Phalke, a pioneer of Indian cinema, who was born near Nashik.

Before you start down, stand at one of the doorways and look back into the dark. Listen. The traffic below is faint up here, and the rock keeps the air cool. Two thousand years ago, someone stood exactly where you are standing, chisel in hand, deciding where the next pillar would go. As you descend the steps, look at the cliff face once more. Every opening you see was made by hand, one strike at a time.