Place · Buddhist rock-cut caves · India
Kanheri caves
Also known as Kanheri, Kanheri Caves
The 109 Buddhist rock-cut caves in a basalt escarpment above the Konkan coast at Borivali in Mumbai, cut from the 1st century BCE through the 10th century — the largest and longest-active Buddhist cave complex in western India. The caves are tied to the ancient port of Sopara (Shurparaka of the Mahabharata and Periplus), whose Ashokan edict is still extant. Kanheri contains viharas, chaityas, dormitories and water tanks hewn into one hillside, with donor inscriptions in Brahmi, Pali and Sanskrit from Satavahana, Traikutaka, Rashtrakuta and Shilahara patrons. The complex was a transit monastery for monks moving between the port and the interior Deccan.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Satavahana
- Tradition
- Donative inscriptions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 19.207, 72.906
Connections (2)
- Trade routeKalyan
The Kanheri caves stand a few kilometres inland from the Kalyan creek, and their donative inscriptions name the merchants, guilds and shipowners of exactly these ports as the people who paid for them. The rock-cut monasteries of the western Ghats were not built by kings: they were built by trade, sited on the passes and behind the harbours, and they lasted as long as the traffic did.
- Trade routeSopara
Kanheri's donative inscriptions name merchants, shipowners, guilds and their wives from Sopara and Kalyan, the two ports a few hours away, and one records a gift from a resident of Chemula — modern Chaul. The monastery has more merchant donors than any other cave site in India and no royal donor of consequence, which is the clearest statement anywhere that the western Deccan's Buddhist architecture was built by trade rather than by kings.
On these journeys
Sources
Kanheri Caves — ASI
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