Cave of My Ancestors

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. Narayan never forgot those stories. As a professor anthropologist, she sought to learn more about the caves, especially the “Vishwakarma cave” a Buddhist worship hall. Immersing herself in family history, oral traditions, and work by archaeologists, art historians, Buddhologists, Indologists, and Sanskritists, Narayan set out to answer the question of how this cave came to be venerated as the home of Vishwakarma, the Hindu/Buddhist god of making.

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.