SHIVA, Yana (Cave of)

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

ATTENTION: The cave dedicated to Shiva at Yana is again and again confused with a niche in the –>Chandika Guwa below. A gaping rift with much of its ceiling almost closed, on average 5 m wide and 10 to 15 m high, pretty shaded but dimly daylight-lit throughout, complete with two opposite entrances and a perennial source of good drinking water. SITUATION: Not only facing the main temple in the karst tower called Bhairaveshwara Shikara but also above and to the left of –>Chandika Guwa, the holiest spot in the Bhairava kshetra (Yana). A well-maintained path, for most of its length a flight of concrete steps, leads up to the north-western entrance. The subterranean route being obvious, the path disappears for the length of the rift to start again at the south-eastern entrance (allowing a comfortable through trip and a nice view over the valley below), this time descending across irregular marble boulders (and a few cut laterite blocks) polished by thousands of barefoot visitors (in German Pilgerschliff?).CAVE DESCRIPTION: The flight of steps up to the western entrance turns right to enters an inviting lobby of fantastically shaped walls overhanging rock faces which shelter the intermediate passage from the outside world to the interior realms. A few metres in issues a lively spring of water (note 1), dimly lit by daylight entering both from the entrance just passed and additionally by a window perched above a sheer boulder pile on the left (north). Few steps later the obvious passage appears to be closed by a huge fallen boulder, standing like a guard at the gate to the main gallery of the cave. This runs straight for 100 m to the south-south-east, mildly lit throughout by daylight finding a garland of inroads by way of gaping ceiling rifts, more often than less blocked by giant boulders. A couple of smallish subordinate rifts entering both the left and right hardly add to the essential cave. CULTURAL HISTORY: A cave without religious structures or venerated objects bt the perfect site for a troglodyte dwelling (keyword: human use), complete with a source of water most comfortable issuing just inside the entrance to flow straight away. The floor is level, the space is shaded and airy but most likely not perfectly sheltering from monsoonal rains, no matter if torrential or not. The troglodytic suitability is clearly indicated by a man-made mud terrace along the south-western rock face, a metre or so raised, topped with low remnants of erected laterite stone walls and secured by a basement of rocks leaving an adjacent ditch for drainage. The cave is quite likely used till today as a troglodyte shelter, at least for pilgrims attending the annual Shivaratri fair (note 2) in the kshetra. The site is suspected to yield archaeological evidence of earlier occupation.CAVE LIFE: Some twittering bats (Chiroptera indet.) of brownish colour, with shortish wings and moving as if stout, take refuge in inaccessible rifts and leave areas thinly covered by dry and ale droppings. Somewhere high up in the clefts and hollows flocks of bronze pigeons (Columbae: Carpophaginae: Chalcophaps indica) dwell, and by their noisy rapid flight add to the wilderness of the scene.ale droppings. Somewhere high up in the clefts and hollows flocks of bronze pigeons (Columbae: Carpophaginae: Chalcophaps indica) dwell, and by their noisy rapid flight add to the wilderness of the scene.