Me Sahyadri October B

As the economic development has taken the center stage, the balance between the environmental sustenance and socio economic development will be under the scanner. As most experts with balanced views have proclaimed, Indian wildlife and ecological system sustenance will be under threat, unless precautions are taken with the help of appropriate research and long term national interests. As we encounter the economic development, many habitats which indirectly or directly help sustainable development will be damaged. The awareness to gauge the success by sustainable development and not by year to year growth is a distant dream any environmentalist will assume in current scenario.
Western ghats, or Sahyadri as we all call it as, is a treasure trove of spectacular landscapes, biodiversity, flora, fauna, some amazing geological wonders and man made monuments. With the increasing pressure from human encroachment, all these elements are under stress and in turn are under depletion. Western ghats should be left untouched by human beings, to protect their future generations from getting short of resources, such as water, energy and clean air. The important elements of western ghats, which need protection are highlighted in the new version of Photo journal, Me Sahyadri Magazine.

About the Maval Cave exploration :
The main caves in Maval region are so significant that other small hermit caves are often overlooked. We as a team of four like minded friends, decided to explore the Maval region for these small hermit caves. We explored and found few beautiful places. The very concept of creating a hermit cave somewhere high up in the hills is fascinating. These places often are full of tranquility and nothing else. With very little architectural evidences and clues, the academicians have obviously ignored these places. It was James Fergusson and James Burgess, during their exhaustive study of “Cave temples of India, 1880” mentioned few of these hermits in Maval region of Pune district. With the little clues and exhaustive investigation, team of four members, Saprakash Belsare, Amey Joshi, Ninad Bartakke and Vivek Kale started the exploration. The journey to locate, trek and analyse these hermit caves itself was fascinating. We met many villagers who were unaware of these places, but also met few shephards who were precisely aware of the hermits and gave us tentaive guidance.
There is a very brief mention about the misceleneous caves of Maval by James Fergusson and James Burgess in their work. Based on available information we decided to search these caves and monuments. The activities were planned. The food, travel , track exploration in difficult and routes full of foliage, enquiring the villagers about the caves, taking measurements and drawing skecthes and maps, photography, GPS data collection, making notes and analysing the information, observing the minor details of the caves etc activites were distributed amongst the team members. We met many bats, owls, geckos, lizards, large spiders, martins, honeybees during the treks. Often we felt sad that we disturbed them to see the caves. Most of these places are hazardous due to pitch darkness, bats, dust, thorny plants, honeybees, low oxygen level in caves and rock patches etc. Not all the attemps were successful. Sometimes we could not find the intended places and sometimes we realised that the cave was just our imagination and did not exist. Nevertheless we saw about 20 new strange caves/monuments during the exploration. The high intensity torches, GPS tool, measuring tapes and measuring laser tool, Honeybee protection caps, maps, google maps, photographs etc were useful during the mission. In this photoessay, I have compiled the information and photographs of Nanoli Caves, Maval, amazing, simple but questions-thrower cave.

Around the famous Karle, Bhaje and Bedse Caves in Maval Tehsil of Pune district there are many smaller hermit caves in the hills. One of the interesting wonderful hermit is located in the hill near village called as Nanoli Tarf Chakan.

Nanoli is a village in Maval Taluka, north west of Talegaon Dabhade, in Pune district in the state of Maharashtra in India. There are two villages with name Nanoli in Maval. The subject Nanoli village where the caves are high up in the hill, is “ Nanoli Tarf Chakan”. The village is located at the base of the isolated hill on the Deccan plateau. Another important village Navlakh Umbre, which happned to be the junction of several trade routes is located near Nanoli hill. There are several other caves in this region at Shelarwadi, Bhandara and Bhamchandra hills. Most of these caves are late Hinayana Buddhist caves. Nanoli cave is located at about 150 meter above the level of the village.

Cave#1: High up in the scarp in the hill north of Nanoli village there is a cave#1 of Nanoli cave complex. This cave is located high up in the scarp. One can see few rock cut steps on the north side of the cave#1,in scarp. There was probabaly a further extension of wooden stairs to reach the cave. Recently the steel stairs have been replaced by gigantic RCC stairs structure to reach the caves, by locals. There is a shrine of Hindu deity Firangai godess in this cave. The cave is simple hall with an internal cell on one side. There are no traces of Stupa or any other Buddhist symbol in the cave. So one can only guess that the original cave was Buddhist based on the architecture and few similarites of this cave with other caves in this region. There are no benches in this cave. The cave is located close to the ancient trade route. The cave is void of any ancient ornamentation. The front of the cave has lots of slots above the door, indicating some kind of wooden structure in front of the cave. It is strange to see that the cave is not made at the ground level but at some elevation, either to avoid geological defect at lower level or to intentionally keep distance from ground level.
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Excavation#2: Further north of the Cave#1, there is some excavation work done at the height of about 60-80 feet above the ground level in the scarp. It is probabaly for the planned chaityagriha, which seems to have been left incomplete. The initialisation of the excavation work at such a height above the ground level invites many questions about the system used by the excavators then for such a difficult start of excavation work without modern tools. Gigantic scafolding must have been made so that the excavators can reach such a high location on the vertical scarp.
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Cave#3: Further north of the Excavation#2, there is a small cave which is a single cell with door. This cave does not have any ornamentation and does not have any bench. Now there is amodern Hindu deity Hanuman in this cave.

Cave#4: Further north of the Cave#3, there is a small incomplete cave which is a single cell with door. This cave does not have any ornamentation and does not have any bench. The front wall of the cave is partially broken.

Cistern#1,2,3,4,5: Further south of the Cave#1, there are three small water cisterns. The cistern#1 is located high up in the scarp, about 5 meter above the walkway. It is partially underground cistern of rectangular size. Further south there is another water cistern#2, at the same level as that of cistern#1.It is partially underground cistern of rectangular size. Further south there is another water cistern#3, at the same level as that of cistern#1,2. It is open cistern of irregular size. It is filled with soil and seems that it does not hold water. The fourth and fifth water cisterns, which are very shallow potsized, are located further south of cistern#3, at some distance. These water cisterns can hold about 5000, 30000, 1500, 1800 and 1500 liters of water respectively. This amount of water about 40000 liter may suffice 40 number of people for their drinking water need over the period of 9 months.

On Pune-Solapur road, there is a village called as Kurkumbh. D.D. KOSAMBI has mentioned in his essay myhtha and reality, that “The goddess of Kurkumbh, Phirangai, whose representatives appear as far away as Hivre (above Sasvad) and in the once Buddhist caves at Nanoli beyond the military depot of Dehu, is one of three great ‘Sisters' (the others being the Devi of Tuljapur and the Amba-bai of Rasin). The Poona-Sholapur road leads to the medieval shrine in a rather neglected village. The original site of Phirangai's advent from Tulajapur was on the plateau back of the village, to which she accompanied a devotee of the barber caste. The grateful devotee had himself beheaded in sacrifice to the goddess on a spot which is still marked with his paduka (footprints) and by a crude representation of the goddess. The cult-object in the later hill-top temple is a shapeless tandala. The barber caste still holds the place of honour, above the gurav temple priest, at the shrine. The plateau is littered with microliths, which are also found in and beyond the watercourse by the village, and by the side of the road along which the annual procession of the goddess goes six miles to the river at Dhond. The place was certainly at a crossing of neolithic tracks. Phirangabai was not the first divine occupant of the plateau, for the eastern end has a tiny dilapidated shrine of the unusual goddess Jhanjhani, with a disproportionately large aipa-stambha light-pillar. Jhanjhani, still worshipped by people of the Mali caste for miles around, was (traditionally) the main deity of two extinct villages just below: Dharmadi and Kurmadi, whose people were massacred in some forgotten raid. That end of the plateau is the richest in microliths. When the goddess sets out for the riverside, the palkhi is first deposited as a marie of respect by the Vetal stone behind her hilltop temple. In view of the enmity between Vetal and all women, this is undoubtedly homage to a previous deity of the spot. The location of the Nanoli caves is explained by the rich microlith track that passes just below, extending for miles in either direction. The Buddhists only displaced some primitive deity whose memory is perpetuated by the imported Phirangabai cult.”

The long bench at Yelghol suggests that many people used to gather here either for some ritual or for some function.