and of Salsette, along Salsette to Tannah, then
over the bridge which connects Salsette with the mainland, across the
narrow head of Bombay harbor, and so on to the station at Khandalla,
about halfway between Bombay and Poonah, where we disembarked. The
caves of Karli are situated but a few miles from Khandalla, and in
a short time we were standing in front of a talus at the foot of a
sloping hill whose summit was probably five to six hundred feet high.
A flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to a ledge running out
from an escarpment which was something above sixty feet high before
giving off into the slope of the mountain. From the narrow and
picturesque valley a flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to the
platform. We could not see the facade of the shaitya on account of
the concealing boscage of trees. On ascending the steps, however, and
passing a small square Brahmanic chapel, where we paid a trifling
fee to the priests who reside there for the purpose of protecting the
place, the entire front of the excavation revealed itself, and with
every moment of gazing grew in strangeness and solemn mystery.

The shaitya is hewn in the solid rock of the mountain. Just to the
left of the entrance stands a heavy pillar (_Silasthamba_) completely
detached from the temple, with a capital upon whose top stand four
lions back to back. On this pillar is an inscription in Pali, which
has been deciphered, and which is now considered to fix the date
of the excavation conclusively at not later than the second century
before the Christian era. The eye took in at first only the vague
confusion of windows and pillars cut in the rock. It is supposed
that originally a music-gallery stood here in front, consisting of
a balcony supported out from the two octagonal pillars, and probably
roofed or having a second balcony above. But the woodwork is now gone.
One soon felt one's attention becoming concentrated, however, upon a
great arched window cut in the form of a horseshoe, through which one
could look down what was very much like the nave of a church running
straight back into the depths of the hill. Certainly, at first, as one
passes into the strange vestibule which intervenes still between the
front and the interior of the shaitya, one does not think at all--one
only _feels_ the dim sense of mildness raying out from the great
faces of the elephants, and of mysterious far-awayness conveyed by the
bizarre postures of the sculpture