GAZETTEERS OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY

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PLACES

GARODI HILL.

Caves.

Garodi Hill, about ten miles south of Talegaon-Dabhade, has, at 450 to 500 feet above the plain, a few early Buddhist caves of about the beginning of the Christian era. The first cave, which is high up in the scarp and now almost out of reach, faces south-west by west. It consisted apparently of a single cell of which the front has fallen away. The second cave is a little lower and includes a vestibule (29'x 9' 9"x8'8") with four cells at the back. Between each pair of doors are two pillars attached to the wall, half octagons with water-pot bases and animal capitals with elephants lions or tigers over each. The capitals support a projecting frieze of the rail pattern. Along the ends and back, under the pillars, runs a bench two feet broad by one foot and seven inches high. The cells within are plain. The cave has been Brahmanised and in the third cell from the left is a ling with a small bull or Nandi in the vestibule and a lamp-pillar and tulsi altar outside. On the side post of the cell door a short roughly cut inscription records the visit of a devotee and is dated 1439 (S. 1361, Siddharthi Samvatsar) the bright half of Shravan or July-August.

North-west at some distance from the second cave is a dry cistern, and still further along is a small cave that has apparently had a wooden front with four upright posts fitting into sockets in the rock above. In the left end is a recess and in the back a door leading into a cell. A few yards beyond is a rock-cut well and near the well is the fourth cave. The front of this fourth cave is entirely gone. To form a new front a thick wall has been built a few feet farther in than the original with two round-arched doors. The hall has four cells on the right, two in the back besides a shrine recess and three on the left, a fourth being entirely ruined. In the shrine recess was a relic shrine or daghoba, its capital as in the Kuda caves being attached to the roof. The relic shrine has been cut away to make room for a small low Shaiv altar or chaurang. Over the fourth cave to the left is a cell, on the left end of the front wall of which is an inscription in Andhra or Deccan Pali letters (A.D. 100). The inscription, which is cut in five lines on a surface full of holes and flaws, may be translated:

To the perfect one. The charitable gift of a dwelling cave or lena by Siagutanika, wife of Usabhanak', a Kunbi (by caste) and ploughman, living in Dhenuka-kada with her son Nanda a householder, with (?)

Crossing the ridge which joins the hill with another to the west of it are two other small caves, both monks' cells of no note and difficult to reach. [Fergusson and Burgess Cave Temples, 246-247; Separate Pamphlet, Archaeological Survey No. X. 38.]

GHODE.

GHOTAVDE