About 40 km northeast of the city of Gaya in the Indian state of Bihar, in the middle of an absolutely flat yellow-green plain, there rises a small rocky ridge about three kilometers long. In the rocks of this ridge, there is the Barabar cave monastery - the oldest preserved in India. The four caves, carved (?) In the rock, date from the reign of King Ashoka the Great, the first monarch to adopt Buddhism as the official religion.
Barabar Monastery was originally Buddhist. It belonged to the Ajivika sect, which during the reign of King Ashoka was the main competitor of Buddhism. The caves themselves are a gift from King Ashoka to this sect, as the inscription on one of the walls says.
The biggest mystery of the Barabar caves is the perfectly polished walls of the correct semicircular shape.
In its central part there is a group of rocky heights known for its oldest man-made caves in India, which are called Barabar (Banawar) Hill. About one and a half kilometers from them to the east there is another location of similar caves belonging to the same historical period as Barabar - the rocky hill of Nagarjuni (Nagarjuni Hill).
Most often, both of these places are referred to under the same general name: "Barabar Caves" (Barabar Caves).
The Barabar group consists of four caves, and the Nagarjuni group consists of three. The caves date back to the time of the great Mauryan empire: they were built during the reign of Emperor Ashoka (268-232 BC) and his successor Dasharatha (232-225 BC). Along with the two Son Bhandar Caves in Rajgir, they are the oldest cave temples in India.
One of the most interesting features of these rock structures is that they were neither Buddhist, nor Hindu, nor Jain, but belonged to the now defunct Shraman sect of Ajivik ascetic philosophers. The Barabar Caves are the only structure associated with this extinct religious and philosophical tradition - Ajiviki
Promotional video:
(From the book by A. Besham "The Miracle that India Was")
The third unorthodox sect, which arose simultaneously with Buddhism and Jainism, was the Ajiviks - a group of ascetics, bound, like the Jains, by severe discipline and also refused all clothing.
The teachings of the founder of the sect, Goshala Mascariputra, are in many ways reminiscent of the ideas of his contemporary Mahavira, who at one time was his friend. Like Mahavira, he was based on the teachings of the previous teachers and ascetic sects, complementing and developing them.
Both Buddhist and Jain sources claim that he was of an ordinary family, he died about a year earlier than Buddha, that is, in 487 BC. e., after a fierce polemic with Mahavira in the city of Shravasti. His followers, apparently, united with the disciples of other preachers, such as the antinomian Purana Kashyapa and the atomist Pakudha Katyayana, and formed the Ajivik sect.
The sect flourished during the Mauryan era - it is known that Ashoka and his successor Dasharatha gave cave temples to the Ajiviks. However, subsequently, the sect began to quickly lose influence, retaining a small number of followers only in a small area of East Mysore and the adjoining regions of Madras, where it remained until the XIV century, after which nothing else was heard about it.
The texts of the Ajiviks have not reached us, and we know about them only from the Buddhist and Jain polemics against this sect. The teachings of the Ajiviks were undoubtedly atheistic and characterized by consistent determinism. The traditional doctrine of karma, as you know, claims that a person's state is determined by his past actions; along with this, a person himself can influence his destiny in the present and in the future - with the help of correct behavior. The Ajiviks denied this. They believed that there is an impersonal cosmic principle (niyati, that is, fate) that determines everything in the world, down to the smallest details. Therefore, it is generally impossible to influence the process of transmigration.
Despite the fact that a person cannot influence his future in any way, the monks of the Ajivik sect indulged in severe asceticism, explaining this by the predestination of fate. Nevertheless, followers of rival creeds accused the Ajiviks of licentiousness and immorality.
The Ajiviks of the Dravidian south developed their teachings in a direction close to the evolution of the “great chariot” Buddhism. Goshala became an imperishable deity for them, like Buddha in the Mahayana system, and the doctrine of predestination was transformed into a doctrine reminiscent of the views of Parmenides: the world is eternal and motionless, and any change and movement is only an illusion. There is a certain similarity here with the teachings of Nagarjuna about "emptiness"
Yet the most amazing thing about the Barabar Caves is not their unique antiquity, not belonging to a mysterious Shraman sect that has long disappeared, not the remarkable accuracy of the geometry of the rooms and the amazing quality of polishing of granite walls and arches, but the fact that these unusual structures were specially designed and built as acoustic cave halls for meditation.
The first three caves are carved into a long, rounded rock, stretching 200 meters from east to west, and surprisingly similar in shape to a giant submarine emerging directly from the ground. The rock of the rock is gneiss (solid metamorphic rock outwardly and in its properties is very similar to granite, so from now on I will always use the words "granite" and "granite").
The path leads to the north side of the cliff, where one cave is located - Karan Chaupar.
The cave dates back to 244 BC. at the entrance there is an inscription that this cave was built 19 years after the accession to the throne of Emperor Ashoka.
The cave has a simple rectangular entrance, which immediately attracts attention with its absolute geometry and perfect workmanship.
The cave is very peculiar, probably there is nothing like it among religious buildings in the world: there is not a single drawing, bas-relief, statue, etc. inside.
Instead, there is a room with perfectly balanced geometric dimensions and marvelous polishing (I remind you that all this was carved in a granite monolith in the 3rd century BC), and quite impressive dimensions: length: 10.4 m, width: 4.3 m, height: about 3.3. m (walls 1.42 m and vault 1.84 m).
Here's what travelers write:
Then the most surprising thing was: the caretaker went to the end of the cave and loudly shouted out a few words, after which the cave was filled with some kind of intricate sound, many of which were clearly new, not related to what the caretaker was saying.
Still slightly dumbfounded, we ourselves began to experiment with sound, loudly pronouncing phrases with different intonations and intervals or clapping our hands. Before you finish your phrase, you are immediately enveloped by the intertwining of many sounds: some look like muffled conversation, exclamations, street noise, etc., others evoke some familiar, but difficult to convey associations.
The emergence of some not very understandable and even strange sensations turned out to be very interesting and unexpected: you are standing in an absolutely dark cave (corners and walls are barely visible), and all “this” seems to be palpably “flying” around you. Some kind of psychedelic.
By the way, all the caves are really very dark. All lighting is daylight through the entrance and a candle that the caretaker lit in another cave. Photos were taken with a flash (autofocus on the spouse with a candle) and then decently finalized.
The result of our exercises was that the spouse is still absolutely sure that inside the cave she heard the everyday noise of the village below: the voices of people, the mooing of cows, the laughter of children, etc., and that "it" got inside either through the entrance or still somehow. All my attempts to dissuade her with the help of physics and logic so far have not led to anything - any arguments are powerless if a person really heard "this".
If you imagine how, in a dark cave with such acoustics, it spins for hours, breaking up into harmonics and intertwining again into something else, a surround sound from repeated with a certain rhythm and intonation to different voices: "Om-m-m!" - just frost on the skin.
When I pondered the nature of this miracle, I greatly regretted that I had not made several measurements of the attenuation by the stopwatch of the clock and did not try to listen more closely to what simple sounds decay (vowel, clap, etc.). I can only say that the complete attenuation of the sound occurs in approximately 5-6 seconds.
I have no doubt that all the Barabara and Nagarjuni caves were created as special acoustic halls. Apparently the ancient builders knew well how, from what and where to build premises with such an amazing reverberation: all caves are carved into a monolith; have almost the same size and internal geometry; the walls, vault and floor have been polished to the highest quality. Even absolutely rectangular openings in all caves are the same - probably this made some sense (perhaps they served as resonator holes).
There is also no doubt that they were intended only for meditation or any similar ritual actions, and the ascetics themselves lived somewhere nearby.
From what modern scientists write, one can understand that very little is known about the ajiviks themselves (see above), and nothing at all about their ritual practices.
Therefore, we will probably never know why the Shraman sect of ascetic atheists needed to create such "high-tech", and most importantly insanely laborious "music boxes."
Two more caves are on the opposite, southern side of the cliff. To get to them, you need to climb the ridge of the rock along a stone staircase located next to the entrance to Karan Chaupar, and go down to the opposite side.
On the southern side of the rock, the western (first along the way) cave, which is located almost symmetrically relative to the longitudinal axis of the rock with Karan Chaupar, is called Sudama.
The entrance to Sudama is the same simple and perfectly rectangular opening as in Karan Chaupar (by the way, all caves are locked in this peculiar way).
The internal layout of Sudama differs from Karan Chaupar: the cave consists of two rooms.
The first is a hall measuring 10 by 5.8 m and a height of 3.6 m, the eastern wall of which is straight.
The western wall of this hall has the shape of a convex arc with a dome.
The wall has such an unusual shape because it repeats the contour of the second, round room with a diameter of 5.8 m located behind it.
The polishing in Sudam is probably of the highest quality among all the Barabara caves (or perhaps the best preserved), and the cave itself looks just perfect.
In the round room, the polishing of the walls is worse preserved - natural corrosion, apparently caused by water seeping into the crack.
Here, another acoustic effect is added to the reverberation, caused by the shape of the room: the voice of the person standing in front of you is not heard “directly”, instead it sounds loudly at the right or at the left ear (if you periodically shift a little).
The cave, according to the rock inscription at the entrance, dates back to the 12th year of the reign of Ashoka (261 BC).
To the right (east) of Sudama is the famous Lomas Rishi cave.
“Famous” because the only one of the Barabara caves has a carved entrance portal, the photograph of which is the “visiting card” of the Barabara caves (of the two Barabara photographs, one will certainly be with the Lomas Rishi portal).
Most likely, the portal was not created by the Ajiviks and most likely has an early Buddhist origin: this is evidenced by a line of elephants moving towards a stupa in the center of the arc and an arch in the shape of a pipala leaf (about pipala, see here).
Lomas Rishi, like Sudama, consists of two rooms (rectangular and round), but its construction for some reason was not completed, so on the plan the second room looks not round, but oval - it was simply not completed.
SP Gupta, S. Vijayakumar. Temples in India
Even judging by the inconclusive dimensions (length - 10-11.1 m, width - 5.2 m, diameter of a round room - 5.2 m), one can judge that Lomas Rishi was conceived as a copy of Sudama.
The time and reason why the work in the cave was not completed are unknown.
Inside, it is clearly visible by what method the room was carved into the rock, and it is quite obvious that this was done using a certain technology and high-quality steel tools (they write that modern scientists still do not have complete clarity on many aspects of stone and iron processing techniques in ancient India) …
In India and in subsequent years, they did not look for easy ways. The number of cave temples completely carved into solid rocks and decorated with a huge number of columns, sculptures and bas-reliefs, among which there are many samples with the same famous polishing, is amazing.
In China and Southeast Asia, everything was different: they usually worked with sandstone, limestone, shale, clay rocks and materials similar in hardness.
Granite rocks are covered with lichens and one should be careful to walk on them even in dry weather. In rain and fog, they are just very slippery and it is almost impossible to stay on an inclined wet surface - downhill is guaranteed. We appreciated such dotted paths when we walked around the Kaneri cave complex near Mumbai in the rain - without them, it would be simply impossible to navigate the rocks.
Visva Zopri (Visvajhopri) - the fourth cave from the Barabar group - is located about half a kilometer from the first cave - Karan Chaupar.
By itself, it is not of great interest, since is not just unfinished, but rather “a little started”.
Much more interesting is the path to the cave along the rocks and the descent along the "ashoka-steps" straight to the village.
In the photo below: the "back" of the rock in which Vishwajopri was cut.
In recent decades, for some unknown reason, cracks in the rock began to progress very actively, reached the cave itself and the water began to erode its arch.
Several years ago, the cracks were patched with mortar and filled with bitumen (it seems not very high quality).
Even earlier, a barrier wall was built so that the area in front of the cave would not be washed out during the rainy season.
"Ashoka step" - a path leading from the caves to the village of paths-punctuated from rectangular grooves, cut on the surface of the rocks at the same time (3rd century BC) as the caves themselves.