When Sacred Caves Outlive Their Own Architecture: A New Hypothesis from Maharashtra’s Jain Sanctuaries

For decades, scholars have dated Maharashtra’s rock-cut Jain caves by their pillars, mandapas, and inscriptions. But what if the architecture is younger than the sanctity it houses?

Sunil Kumar Jain (Sameer) of Pune, drawing on field surveys and direct observation at sites such as Dhank, Junnar, and Dharashiv, proposes a provocative distinction: a cave’s age and the age of its present architecture may be two different things. Natural rock shelters, he suggests, may have served ascetic and devotional purposes long before they were carved, expanded, and adorned.

“The construction of a rock-cut cave can occur in many stages,” he writes. “At a given place, a natural rock shelter or early cave may already have existed, and later it was cut and expanded.”

His surveys also note the recurring presence of Lord Parshvanath and Ambika, the presiding deity linked to Neminath — devotional markers that may point to older layers of practice beneath the stonework.

Jain offers no final conclusion, only a hypothesis: that Maharashtra’s caves may hold spiritual memory older than their walls.