Exploring family stories reveals the rich history of a seventh-century Buddhist shrine.
 
As a young girl in Bombay, Kirin Narayan was enthralled by her father’s stories about how their ancestors had made the ancient rock-cut cave temples at Ellora. Recalling those stories as an adult, she was inspired to learn more about the caves, especially the Buddhist worship hall known as the “Vishwakarma cave.” Immersing herself in family history, oral traditions, and works by archaeologists, art historians, scholars of Buddhism, Indologists, and Sanskritists, Narayan set out to answer the question of how this cave came to be venerated as the home of Vishwakarma, the god of making in Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
 
Cave of My Ancestors represents the perfect blend of Narayan’s skills as a researcher and writer. Her quest to trace her family’s stories took her to Ellora; through libraries, archives, and museums around the world; and across disciplinary borders. Equal parts scholarship, detective story, and memoir, Narayan’s book ably leads readers through centuries of history, offering a sensitive meditation on devotion, wonder, and all that connects us to place, family, the past, and the divine.

Kirin Narayan is emerita professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She is the author of several books, including My Family and Other Saints, Everyday Creativity, and Alive in the Writing, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

A Few People Who Reappear through This Book
A Note on Transcription

Joining Palms at Ellora

Part I. Names and Speculations
1. The Cave, Code and Cord of Vishwakarma
2. The Carpenters’ “Hut”
3. Shadows of Makers
4. Surpassing Humane Force

Part II. Communing with Ancestors
5. As Regards the Cultural Migrations of Artisans
6. The Debt to Gods and Ancestors
7. The Pride of the Vishwakarma Lineage
8. Open Sesame!

Part III. The Resident of Ellora
9. Via-Via
10. Ila the Serpent Maiden
11. From Mantras to Tools
12. An Injured Finger and Other Tokens of “Proof”

Part IV. Forms in Flux
13. Vestiges of Worship
14. Transformations through Water
15. Locating the Goddess
16. On the Move

Hands inside Hands

Acknowledgments
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Index