It had been used by one of the sadhus living in the park till the Bombay high court, in the late ’90s, ordered the eviction of all sadhus from the park. One of the caves was actually inhabited till recently and was even surfaced with modern bathroom tiles. The absence of water cisterns also indicate that monks lived there in the monsoon,”said team leader Suraj Pandit in a quote given to The Times of India. Moreover, we found monolithic tools which were prevalent in the 1st century BC. “ The newly discovered caves may have been older than the Kanheri Caves as they were simpler in form and they lacked water cisterns, which are found in the more evolved architecture of Kanheri. They began their exploration as soon as the forest department gave their permission. After a day, another team of a magazine editor and a student of Buddhism at Sathaye College, found two more caves. The researchers studied areas and texts for three months. Aside from that, they also studied Pali texts, which described similar ‘viharas’ of Buddhist monks around Rajgir in Bihar. Ancient people constructed most of viharas near sources of water. The credits of this discovery goes to a three-member team that carried out this job under an excavation programme, which was jointly conducted by the Centre for Archaeology, Mumbai University, and the department of ancient Indian culture, Sathaye College, Vile Parle.īefore beginning actual field work, the team studied documentary topography and water resources. The discovery was made in February 2015, and is said to be the result of a systematic survey of the area. While a formal approval from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is awaited for detailed exploration and documentation of the new caves, the team that has discovered the caves date them between 1st century BCE (or BC) and 5th-6th century CE (or AD). The newly discovered caves may have been older than the Kanheri Caves as they were simpler in form and they lacked water cisterns, which are found in the more evolved architecture of Kanheri. ![]() About 160 other caves, named the Kanheri Caves, are nearby and were dug about 2,000 years ago. The Kanheri Caves are famous for their water management and rain water harvesting systems. These are not the only Buddhist caves in the park, which is the biggest park inside any city in the world. One of the caves has the ruins of a harmika or the top part of a stupa. The caves are Buddhist ‘viharas’ (residences for monks) that served as shelters from monsoons for Buddhist monks more than 2,000 years ago. Seven new caves have been discovered in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park that are possibly dated between 1st century BC and 5th-6th century AD.
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