PLACES

PANDAV DARAH CAVES

The Pandav Darah Caves (Panhala Peta) apparently of Buddhist origin, are cut in a semi-circular scarp about twenty-five feet high overlooking about a thousand feet of thickly wooded hill-sides above the plains six miles west of Panhala and eighteen miles north-west of Kolhapur. The group of caves includes a large cistern running into the hill-side, eight dwelling cells, and two large caves, a chapel and a school. In front of the caves are traces of a pillared verandah most of which has fallen into the ravine twenty feet below. Each of the two largest caves has a verandah, a hall divided into three sections or rooms with remains of pillars along the side walls, and an inner cell or shrine each with what is described as a carved elevation probably a daghoba or relic-shrine in the centre. The verandah of the chapel is fifteen feet long and seven feet wide. The sections of the chapel hill are said to measure 27' x 12', 28' x10', and 29' x 3½'. The roof is flat and the height of the hill eight feet. In the back wall of the hall a door (6½' x 2½') opens into an inner room or shrine (10' x 7' x 8') with a carved central elevation apparently a relic-shrine. The school hall which has a flat roof 7½ feet high is divided into three parts the outer 32' x 6½', the central 15' x 9', and the inner 12' x 9', the cell of which the measurements are not given, has like the chapel shrine a carved central elevation apparently a relic-shrine.

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