William Dalrymple, October 23 2014, The New York Review of Books:
Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan, The New Yorker, April 2006
"...It is the second phase of activity in the
caves under the Hindu Vatakata Emperor Harisena (circa 475–500 AD), ruler of the Deccan, that
most interests Walter Spink. It was during this fifth-century period of
construction—a full six hundred years after the first caves were carved—that
twenty-six of the thirty-one caves, and all the most elaborate ones, were dug.
Rejecting the conventional line that these caves were the work of many
generations of laborers burrowing away into the hillside, century after
century, Spink believes that with the exception of the five early caves, the
rest were constructed in a mere sixteen years between 462 and 477 by Harisena,
whom he describes as one of India’s greatest rulers...."
