The Ajanta Caves are a
UNESCO World Heritage Site located about a 100 kms from the city of Aurangabad
in the state of Maharashtra. This incredible series of "cave temples"
contain some of the most exquisite sculptures and paintings found anywhere in
the country.
Ajanta has become a major
tourist attraction only comparatively recently. In the early years of the
century, only the most hardy and determined traveler managed to reach the
place. The journey involved twelve bone-shaking hours by bullock cart from the
nearest railhead, followed by a four-hour scramble up to the caves themselves.
The surrounding country was inhospitable and dangerous. The local tribe, the
Bhils, usually attacked strangers. Wild animals abounded – in fact the early
expeditions tied white rags to bushes, as markers to warn where someone had
recently been killed by a tiger. Worst of all, apparently, were the local bees.
Ferocious colonies clustered in the ravine and often made it impossible to get
to the caves. The first parties had to be accompanied by professional "bee
exterminators," and there are stories of learned archeologists diving into
the river to escape an enraged swarm.
Nowadays, all this has
changed. Daily buses ply in and out of the car park area beneath the caves.
Crowds flock from Bombay or faraway Delhi. Yet despite the twentieth century –
the visitors, the hawkers, and the buses – Ajanta retains a powerful
atmosphere, and when the people have gone and peace returns, its spirit emerges
once more. Local legend says that the ravine has always been the abode of a
particularly powerful nagaraja or snake god; at the twilight hours of dawn and
dusk, you can believe it. Once you enter the caves, the outside world drops
away; you are in another realm. The charm of this new world seeps into the mind
surreptitiously and plants a strange seed, which, as it sprouts, will render
ever more blurred the shifting boundary between illusion and reality.
History
It is believed that a
band of wandering Buddhist monks first came to Ajanta in the 2nd century BC
searching for a place to meditate during the monsoons. Ajanta was ideal –
peaceful and remote from civilization. The setting was spectacular: a sharp,
wide, horseshoe-shape gorge that fell steeply to a wild mountain stream flowing
through the jungle below. The monks began carving crude caves into this rock
face for themselves, and a new temple form was born. Over seven centuries, the
cave temples of Ajanta evolved into a work of splendid art. Structural
engineers are awestruck by the sheer brilliance of these ancient masters who,
undaunted by the limitations of seemingly crude implements, materials, and
labor, created this marvel of art and architectural splendor.
In all, 29 caves were
carved, 15 of which were left unfinished; some of them were viharas
(monasteries) complete with hard stone pillows carved onto the monks’ stone
beds; others, chaityas (Buddhist cathedrals). The chaityas were for worship,
whereas the viharas were principally for living. Of the thirty caves here, five
are chaityas (Caves 9, 10, 19, 26, and 29), and the other twenty-five are
viharas. All of them were intricately and profusely decorated with sculptures
and murals depicting the many incarnations of Buddha. Strictly speaking, the
caves are not caves at all, but temples, hollowed out of the living rock. They
can be divided chronologically into two groups. The earlier group (8, 9, 10,
12, 13, and 15A) belong to the Hinayana sect of Buddhism and are assigned to
the second century B.C. The remainder belong to the Mahayana sect, and date
from about AD. 450 to 650.
By A.D. 650 Buddhism was
already on the wane in India. The monk-artists abandoned their work, and the
temples were swallowed up by the jungle. Ellora became
the pre-eminent cave temple after this period. Ajanta lay forgotten for twelve
hundred years, lost to the world and hidden under creepers, shrubs, and jungle.
Wild animals took over the caves, rain soaked and crumbled the walls, and most
of the shrines were completely silted up.
Then, in 1819, it was
rediscovered. A party of British army officers, attached to the Madras Army,
were on exercises in the nearby Indhyahadri Hills. One free day, one of them,
named John Smith, was tiger hunting in the Ajanta area, which was famed for its
wild animals. Following the riverbed in search of game, he met a local boy who
insisted that the gorge below was full of tigers' lairs. He took Smith to a
promontory that overlooks the curving ravine. Looking down into the ravine, the
soldier suddenly noticed something peeping out above the tangled jungle below.
It was the top of the facade of one of the caves.
A
mural from the Ajanta caves, now at the National Museum in Delhi.
It was some time before
the importance of the find was fully appreciated. A dry paper read by a Mr.
William Erskine to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822 described the caves as
“having sitting figures with curled wigs. No traces of the Brahminical religion
were discovered. The paintings were in a decent state of preservation.” A more
enthusiastic visitor arrived in 1823. This was Lieutenant Alexander of the 16th
Lancers. He had to run the gauntlet of the Bhils: “They were a most
savage-looking race,” he tells us, “perfectly black, low in stature and almost
naked. Our firearms prevented them from attacking us; and we were allowed to
proceed unmolested.” Alexander visited many of the caves and was delighted by
"their marvelous freshness of color."
Other visitors came and
went, many of them chipping off souvenirs from the frescoed walls. Gradually
the caves attracted scholarly attention. In 1843 the famous architectural
historian, James Fergusson, visited Ajanta and was worried by the combined
attacks of the elements and the souvenir hunters. He begged the East India
Company (which still had control of the area) to do something to preserve and
protect the paintings "before decay and the recklessness of tourists has
entirely obliterated them." His plea resulted in the appointment of
Captain Robert Gill, an artist attached to the Madras Army, whose brief was to
copy all he could of the frescoes.
The Story of Robert Gill
Gill arrived in Ajanta in
1844 and spent the rest of his life there. He was utterly devoted to the place;
the elemental hillside became his Walden. Gill was indefatigable. He
photographed the frescoes with a magnesium lamp; made painstaking tracings,
copies, and colored drawings; painted by the flickering light of oil lamps. For
twenty-seven years he lived there. He spurned a comfortable bungalow in the
Ajanta village, preferring to sleep in the caves themselves, or in a makeshift
thatched hut he built himself on the hillside. He lived in constant danger from
the Bhils and the wild animals; in fact he is reputed to have shot 150 tigers
with his own gun.
Robert
Gill at Ajanta (1869).
Happily there was one
relief from his dedicated life of austerity. He fell in love with, and married,
a dark-eyed Indian beauty. In the evenings, after a day spent painting, he
would watch her dance, as she moved with the same grace that animated his
beloved frescoes.
They say there is a curse
on Ajanta. Many years ago Indra, the King of the Gods, allowed the other gods
and goddesses to descend to earth for one night's celebration, on the condition
that they returned to heaven before the cock crowed the dawn. They came to
Ajanta, and so great were their revels that they quite forgot the cock's
warning crow. As a punishment they were frozen into the walls and statues of
the caves, and there they will remain for all eternity. Yet despite their
transgression, these foolish gods are still divine. Any mere mortal who tries
to deface, or even reproduce, their fallen forms, will meet with untold
misfortune.
Gill certainly had his
share. He suffered intermittent illness, once nearly dying of dysentery. In
1857, during the First War of Indian Independence, he was forced to leave the
caves. Shortly after his return he fell while climbing, broke his leg, and was
out of action for many weeks.
As he finished each batch
of paintings, he had it shipped to London from Bombay. After twenty years'
solitary work, he had virtually completed the mammoth task of copying all the
most important paintings of Ajanta. All the facsimiles were gathered together
in the Crystal Palace to be exhibited to the public. Then, in December 1866,
the Palace was destroyed by fire. Three or four of Gill's paintings were saved,
the rest went up in flames.
After the fire Gill
struggled on for five years, but he was a broken man. In the end he sold off
what was left of his drawings and equipment for a few pounds. Soon after he
became ill and died. He is buried in the little cemetery of Bhusawal, just
north of the caves he had loved so fruitlessly.
The Curse of Ajanta
But at least the rest of the
world was now aware of the immense importance of the site. In the 1870s the
Bombay School of Arts sent out a team to the caves under its principal, John
Griffiths. The team spent four seasons copying the paintings. As the facsimiles
were finished, they were shipped back to London. Mindful of his predecessor's
fate, Griffiths urged his London sponsors to photograph the paintings as they
arrived. Unfortunately, the expense involved was considered too great. The
paintings were stored in the annex of the Victoria and Albert Museum in
Kensington.
In 1885 fire broke out.
Eighty-seven of the paintings – many of them canvases over thirty feet (nine
meters) square-were destroyed. The extraordinary thing was, that though the
fire raged for more than three hours throughout the large building, the only
objects of value that were damaged were the Ajanta facsimiles.
In 1918 a team of
Japanese Buddhist artists, under the leadership of Professor Sawamura, head of
the Oriental Arts Department of Kyoto University, arrived at Ajanta. Their
concern was primarily with the carvings. Their technique was to dampen rice
paper and press it against the stone to obtain an exact impression from which
reproduction molds could be made. Hundreds of these delicate casts were made
and carefully shipped back to japan. A few years later they were all destroyed
by an earthquake.
Throughout the years the
souvenir hunters continued to desecrate the frescoes, often cutting out whole
slabs of painting. Some of these later found their way into the world's great
collections. But things took a turn for the better in 1920.
A lover of Indian
culture, Lady Herringham, alerted the Nizam of Hyderabad, under whose
jurisdiction Ajanta was, to the deterioration in the murals. On her advice he
had two Italian restorers brought out: a Signor Cecconi and his assistant. They
undertook work to fix the remaining paintings to the wall, principally by
injecting casein into them. At the same time leaks in the caves were plugged,
lights installed, and an effective guard system established. But the curse of
Ajanta was operating, nonetheless.
The Griffiths expedition
had applied varnish to the paintings to render them more visible, and the two
Italians now applied a coating of shellac and alcohol as a fixative. These
varnishes gradually darkened with the years. In time they became increasingly
opaque and then cracked, trapping dust between the layer of varnish and the
actual surface of the paintings. Thus the paintings were again vulnerable to
the damage by seepage, humidity, and bat urine that had plagued them since they
were discovered.
A
mural of a dancing girl. On the left is Gill's copy. On the right is the mural
today, having deteriorated.
Ajanta has been under the
care of the Archeological Survey of India since 1951. Recent preservation work
has been intensive. Flaked portions are shaved off, stains removed, and the
paintings strengthened by a mixture of solvents to arrest further
deterioration. Preservatives such as polyvinyl acetate are being applied. In
the course of this work several new paintings have been uncovered, notably in
Caves 6 and 17.
Architecture of Ajanta Caves
The original entrance to
the caves was along the riverbed, each cave having a flight of stairs leading
up to it. The first to be excavated was Cave 10. Then came the other Hinayana
sanctuaries spreading out to either side of it. The Mahayana caves were added
later on the ends of the existing crescent.
At both Ellora and
Ajanta, monumental facades and statues were chipped our of solid, hard rock,
but at Ajanta, an added dimension survived the centuries, expressed in India's
most remarkable examples of cave paintings. Onto a carefully prepared plaster
of clay, cow dung, chopped rice husks, and lime spread onto the rough rock
walls, the monks devotedly painted their works with only natural local
pigments: red ocher, burnt brick, copper oxide, lampblack, and dust from green
rocks that had been crushed.
The Ajanta caves are like
chapters of a splendid epic in visual form, recalling the life of the Buddha
and illustrating tales from Buddhist jatakas (fables). As the artists lovingly
told the story of the Buddha, they portrayed the life and civilization they
knew. The total effect is that of a magic carpet transporting you back into a
drama played by nobles, wise men, and commoners. When the electric spot lights
flicker onto the paintings, the figures seem to come alive.
Opinions vary as to the
most exquisite of the Ajanta caves. The best paintings are generally considered
to be found in Caves 1, 2, 16, 17, and 19, and the best sculptures in Caves 1,
4, 17, 19, and 26. (The caves are numbered from west to east, not in
chronological order.) Most popular are the paintings in Cave 1, of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and Bodhisattva Padmapani. Padmapani, or the
"one with the lotus in his hand," is considered to be the alter ego
of the Lord Buddha who assumed the duties of the Buddha when he disappeared.
Padmapani is depicted with his sinuous-hipped wife, one of the most widely
reproduced figures of Ajanta.
Cave 2 is remarkable for
its ceiling decorations and its murals relating the birth of the Buddha. For
its sheer exuberance and joie de vivre, the painting in Cave 2 of women on a
swing is judged the best.
The
entrance to one of the main chaityas.
In Cave 4, sculpture is
the main interest. It is the largest vihara in Ajanta and depicts a man and a
woman fleeing from a mad elephant and a man giving up his resistance to a tempting
woman.
The earliest cave is Cave
10, a chaitya dating from 200 BC filled with Buddhas and dominated by an
enormous stupa. However, it is only from AD 100 that the exquisite
brush-and-line work begins. In breathtaking detail, the Shadanta Jataka, a legend
about the Buddha, is depicted on the wall in a continuous panel.
The mystical heights
attained by the artist-monks reach their zenith in Caves 16 and 17, where the
viewer is released from the bonds of time and space. Here one is faced by a
continuous narrative that spreads horizontally and vertically, evolving into a
panoramic whole-at once logical and stunning. One painting here is riveting;
known as "The Dying Princess," it is believed to represent Sundari,
the wife of the Buddha's half-brother, Nanda, who left her to become a monk.
There is an excellent view of the river from Cave 16, which may have been the
entrance to the entire series of caves.
Cave 17 possesses the
greatest number of pictures undamaged by time. Luscious heavenly damsels fly
effortlessly overhead, a prince makes love to a princess, and the Buddha tames
a raging elephant. Other favorite paintings include the scene of a woman
applying lipstick and of a princess performing sringar (her toilet).
A number of unfinished
caves were abandoned mysteriously, but even these are worth a visit. A steep
climb of 100 steps rakes you to them. You may also take the bridle path, a
gentler ascent, with a crescent pathway running alongside the caves. From here,
there is a magnificent view of the ravines of the Waghura River.
Travel
The Ajanta Caves are
about 100 km (62 miles) northeast of the city of Aurangabad in Maharashtra and
around 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Mumbai. Aurangabad and Bombay are only
about 45 minutes apart by air. The caves are closed on Mondays and open from
9AM to 5:30PM on other days, including national holidays. Flash photography is
not allowed inside the caves. A video permit costs Rs.25. Many of the caves are
quite dark so bring your own torch if you want to see any detail. Guides can be
hired at the tourist office near Cave 1. The cost is about Rs350 for four
people for a two-hour tour.
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