Ajanta Caves

This article seeks to present a short overview of the astronomy of Sanchi and Udayagiri (near Vidisha), and a longer overview of the astronomy of the Ajanta caves 26 and 19. With regard to Sanchi and Udayagiri, it presents excerpts from the published researches in order to create a background and context for the main topic, that is, Ajanta on which subject fresh observations are being presented here for the first time to reveal a hitherto undisclosed dimension of the architecture of two magnificent monuments of Ajanta. Eventualy, the article seeks to convey that science and astronomy had a great role to play in the temple building activity in the fifth-century India.

This is the second edition of earlier title of the same name (2013). The subtitle has been changed here a little. The book contains:

* Colour photographs of 70 Ajanta narrative paintings.
* * 84 abridged Buddhist legends.
* Elementary introduction to the Ajanta paintings.
* Information based on the current research.
* A window to deeper studies.
* References to the scholarly works that first identified the nearest textual sources of the painted legends.

Ajanta (pp. 36 -50), Aurangabad (pp. 191-200), Bedsa (pp. 210-213), Bhaja (pp. 221-227), Ellora (pp. 439-449), Junnar (pp. 599-605), Kanheri (pp. 624-630), Karli (pp. 634-639), Ratnagiri (pp. 975-985), in: K.T.S. SARAO & JEFFREY D. LONG (eds), Buddhism and Jainism, Dordrecht: Springer, 2017 (Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, chief editor ARVIND SHARMA). (Written in 2011).

The monograph contains 15 Buddhist legends painted on the walls of Ajanta Cave No. 1 of the late fifth centry CE. Each episode -- of each of the 14/15 painted narratives of Cave 1 -- is arranged here in the same way as the painters painted them.

It is a kind of catalogue showing each narrative scene by scene, episode by episode.

The monograph covers 14 of the total 15 narrative paintings of Cave 1. It has at least one photo of every episode of 14 narratives painted on the walls of the caves. The corpus is based on the latest research by Dieter Schlingloff.

There is also an abridged re-telling of the 15 Buddhist legends. The text of the stories are reproduced from the author's earlier works.

The nearest textual sources of the narratives are given in a table in the end of the book. The table is a preface to the bibliography of ancient texts or Buddhist scriptures in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian. The bibliography seeks to provides in brief relevant details about the ancient manuscripts, archives, repositories, critical editions, translations, or analytical works.

Since they were 'rediscovered' by the West in 1819, the painted Buddhist caves at Ajanta have attracted a great deal of attention. Yet this interest has tended to focus on the narrative scenes of kingship and courtship. This essay shifts the gaze upwards to examine a kaleidoscope of the weird and wonderful - flying celestial figures, dwarves, aquatic and mythical creatures, verdant foliage, blossoming flowers and decorative meander patterns - inhabiting the ceiling of Cave 1. Such motifs also existed in the visual traditions of the diverse cultures early Buddhist art came into contact with, from Ancient Greece to Egypt and Persia. However, a delicately rendered white elephant surrounded by lotus flowers, found on an unremarkable border of the ceiling, appears to be a uniquely Indian motif. It serves to demonstrate the ceiling of cave 1 was not simply a decorative composite pastiche of non-Buddhist forms, as has been suggested, but a deliberate appropriation of these within a Buddhist framework. Links between the Buddha and the white elephant are revealed through textual evidence found in the Mahayana scriptures and supported with visual analysis of other Buddhist iconography found at the site and throughout India. The elephant panel, whose meaning has long been lost and since rewritten for cultural, social and economic benefits, is used here to reinstate the religiosity of cave 1’s ceiling. This essay argues that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, the seemingly strange and miscellaneous paintings we find here had great significance within the Buddhist practice flourishing at Ajanta in the fifth century CE. The ceiling subtly guided the viewer towards higher states of mind, and in the direction of the most important part of the cave: the shrine of the Buddha.

Nestled on a ridge of the Sahyadri hills in the Western Deccan plateau, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Ajanta is a sprawling complex of Buddhist rock-cut temples famous worldwide for the marvellous gallery of paintings adorning their walls. By attempting an appraisal of the material qualities of the Ajanta murals, this paper aims at exploring the relationship between the materiality of the medium and the function of the paintings. Drawing upon recent studies of material iconography and James Gibson’s theory of affordability, I shall explore how the properties of the materials have afforded certain actions and visions in the making and reception of art at Ajanta. My intent is to show that the aesthetics of the murals depends upon a skilful exploitation of the optical qualities of the pigments in the environment of the caves. In particular, I shall focus on how the properties of light and colour shaped the distinctive “sculptural style” attributed to Ajanta painting. The result of this analysis will enable me to take a position in the dispute about the function of the murals, arguing that they were meant to enact the psycho-physical experience of “darshan”, the effulgent vision of the divine.

This essay presents a snapshot of the year 465 CE. Place: South Asia with the Ajanta Cave 11 in focus. A history is narrated here to describe how the stupa-shrine (naos) of the Ajanta Cave 11 was conceived, and added to what was earlier a dormitory; how the Hunnic disturbance in Eurasia created migrations of people including the one when the Bactrian and Gandhāran people migrated towards Middle India and the Deccan on one hand and the Tarim / Taklamakan region on the other. The war refugees, I argue, introduced the concept of multi-functional or composite architecture in India. It was to bring under the same roof the three major functions of monastic architecture: dwelling, congregation, and worship. It was an experiment that resulted in the creation of Cave 11’s naos. It was a quadrant and flat-roofed naos. The idea was at once accepted across all the contemporary rockcut sites. The article shows how the displaced people the “foreigners” from Eastern Mediterranean, ancient Turkey, Iran, Bactria and Gandhāra, swiftly changed the Buddhism of Middle India and the Deccan from an earlier form of Śrāvakayāna that insisted on the stupa cult to a different one that insisted on the cultic worship of the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. The latter was a confluence of the traditional Sarvāstivāda and Bodhisattvayāna, which acquired the name of Mūlasarvāstivāda towards the seventh century CE.

A Heritage Story looking to connect a phenomenon in Indian Culture with performing arts, objects in museums. It is a story of travelling India through the motif of ‘boond’ a drop of water. Water as nature lends itself to the imagination of artists and evokes a range of human emotions. The water drop is a world in itself. It assumes different forms as dew (Tushar in Sanskrit, Shabnam in Urdu), like tears, the freezing of the drop as a pearl, and the link of water with the moon and the planet Venus. The world of the water drop represents intuition and imagination. Philosophically, the human mind is compared to the Lotus, which must remain detached from its illusionary surroundings just as the Lotus does its world of water and droplets in which it grows.

This monograph proposes a reconstructive chronology of South Asia’s history in the late fifth century CE. It shows how the Gupta lands up to Yamuna and Narmada were encroached by Alchon Hun Khiṅgila, et al. Other powerful dynasties such as the Vākāṭaka, Aulikara, Parivrājaka, and Traikūṭaka were nearly destroyed in multiple invasions. A military history of India has been reconstructed here based on a pattern of deaths of many kings. The study shows how the development of contemporary rock-cut monuments was disrupted and abandoned.

Devoted exclusively to the narrative paintings, this small book is an abridged edition of An Introduction to the Ajanta Caves: With Examples of Six Caves (Baroda: Hari Sena Press, 2012; ISBN 9788192510705) by the same author.

The monograph is aimed for students of higher education studying ancient Indian history and culture or Buddhist art and archaeology of the Indian subcontinent. The language is simple so that even such general readers who desire to understand the subject in detail would have no inconvenience.

You will find here the following contents within a single volume:

- A short introduction to the historical, religious, and political background of Ajanta, such that is based on the latest researches.
- Comprehensive, systematic, and summarized re-telling of the narratives based on the latest corpus by Dieter Schlingloff.
- Extensive photographic documentation of each of the extant narrative wall paintings. Exclusion: Caves 9 and 10 that could not be photographed due to poor state of the paintings.

Incense, Flowers and Prayers in Honour of the Buddha, Ritualistic Scenes in Ajanta and other Buddhist Sites of Maharashtra, fifth to eighth Century, in: Ratnasri: Gleanings from Indian Archaeology, Art History and Indology: Papers Presented in Memory of Dr. N R Banerji, ed. ARUNDHATI BANERJI, New Delhi: Kaveri Books, pp. 51-70.

Zin, M., 2015, Pictures of paradise for good luck and prosperity: Depictions of themes irrelevant for enlightenment in the older Buddhist tradition (with special reference to the paintings of Ajanta), in: Mani-Sushma, Archaeology and Heritage (Dr. B.R. Mani Festschrift), ed. V. Kumar, B. Rawat, Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, vols. 1-3, vol. 1, pp. 125-47, pls. pp. 49-56.

The book contains a detailed study of the chronological development of four Ajanta caves. It also contains a comprehensive collection of the majority of the Buddhist legends that are painted on the walls of the Ajanta caves.

The history section includes the chronological development of four Ajanta caves: Caves 1, 2, 16 and 17. This is a new account of the chronology of the Ajanta caves based on the research carried out by the author.

The narrative sections include short summaries of 84 Buddhist legends that are painted on the walls of the Caves 1, 2, 9, and 17. The short summaries are based on the pioneering research work carried by Dieter Schlingloff and his predecessors. The descriptions follow the nearest known versions of the stories, many of them from still very obscure Buddhist scriptures.

At least one photograph of each of the preserved painted legends has been reproduced. In total there are 284 colour photographs, which also include some examples from architectural details, sculptures, inscriptions, ground plans, and motifs.

A short introduction of our current understanding about the prevailing political and cultural background is also given.

The book is intended for the advanced researchers, educators, students, and such general readers who seek an in-depth understanding of the history of the Ajanta caves and the paintings.

Les âges de la vie dans le monde indien, Actes des journées d’étude de Lyon (22-23 juin 2000) édités par CHRISTINE CHOJNACKI, Paris: Diffusion De Boccard, 2001, pp. 283-323. (Lyon: Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur l’Occident Romain de l’Université Lyon 3, Collection du Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur l’Occident Romain, Nouvelle série n° 24)

The very idea of hiatus emerged in the historiography of the western Deccan is deeply rooted in the readings into the political events. Political narratives have been responsible for making ‘hiatus’ as a historical event not only in the case of early Thēravādin caves but also in the case of later Mahayanist caves. It has become a narrative of the present discourses on the caves. How art historical studies have grown under the shadow of the polemics of political history is worth noting and needs to be contested. Contestation has to be based on the acceptable propositions that would create a very different understanding as well as provide impetus to the new issues and problematize the cave monuments in its historical context. In case of early caves, the Sātavāhana chronology has become the issue of contestation and in order to place the Puranic genealogy in a unilinear fashion, historians have read event of a conflict between the Sātavāhanas and the Kṣatrapas as a mark of hiatus in the process of cave excavation. Such generalization, time and again has emerged out of belief in the textual tradition that the Sātavāhana genealogy in the Puranas has to have greater authenticity. Therefore, one has to contest the idea based on the very reading of inscriptions, for example, if one of the Sātavāhana kings is mentioned to have ruled for 52 years, then why there is no visible evidence to corroborate his rule or is it because of the fictitious nature of the evidence, our understanding gets controlled by such evidence? Similarly, the Mahāyāna phase in the western Deccan has always been dated as the development of the fifth century AD as if the western Deccan was immune to the Mahāyāna Buddhism, consequently, was averse to the Buddha image representation, and therefore, the Hinayāna/Thēravada caves went on getting excavated till about fifth century AD, thus it is concluded that the Mahāyāna caves began only in the fifth century AD. Moreover, when it comes to the Vakatakas, the hiatus at Ajanta, as has been highlighted by Prof. Walter Spink needs to be contested in the light of the dated Vada inscription of the Konkan Mauryas, and the image tradition that gets developed at Kanheri itself. One pertinent example would be that of cave complex at Ajanta patronized by the local king Upēndragupta. The lower portion of the attendant figures in the shrine of cave 20 of Ajanta is incomplete and the inscription of the Upēndragupta in Ajanta cave 17 claims that he had defeated the Aśmakas. If the war between the two local kings was that paramount then why the artisan left unfinished the lower portion of the attendant images in cave 17 at Ajanta? No doubt that the Ajanta cave 20 was also patronized by the Upēndragupta and he might have initiated its excavation only after the war. Besides, how do we understand the imagery at Ajanta itself in the light of the observation that only the later caves of Ajanta have marked the influence of the eastern Vidarbha sculptural tradition whereas the early phase is devoid of such influences? Can we show any connection between the coastal tradition and Ajanta when it comes to the Mahāyāna caves sculpture? Why the pictorial conventions of shrine Buddha images at Ajanta cave 11, 15, lower 6 and 7 do not fall under the conventions of the late fifth century AD developments of sculpture at Ajanta itself? Can there be a better reading of the development of conventions in the light of the Vada inscription of the Konkan Mauryas and its palaeographical implications? The paper attempts to seek answers to the questions raised above with appropriate examples.