09/03/2019
By Jonathan Glancey
23 February 2015
The Ajanta Caves, 30 spellbinding Buddhist prayer halls and monasteries carved, as if by sorcery, into a horseshoe-shaped rock face in a mountainous region of India’s Maharashtra state, 450km (280 miles) east of Mumbai, were ‘discovered’ by accident in 1819.
Unknown for more than 1,000 years except to wild animals, insects, flood waters, prodigious foliage and perhaps the local Bhil people, this magnificent work of art, architecture and contemplation, was abandoned by those who created it as long ago as AD 500. In 1983 it was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.
John Smith, a young British cavalry officer, was on a tiger hunt when he spotted the mouth of a cave high above the Waghora (Tiger) River that could only have been man made. Scrambling up with his party, Smith entered the cave and, branding a flaming grass torch, encountered a great vaulted and colonnaded hall, its walls covered in faded paintings. Beneath a dome, a timeless praying Buddha fronted a mound-like shrine, or stupa.
Smith carved his name on a statue of a Bodhisattva, a figure representing one of the past lives of the Buddha before he achieved Nirvana, or union with the divine spirit. Since then, thousands of people have added their names as the Ajanta caves – a gallery of the oldest and some of the finest of all Buddhist art – has gained fame and become a compelling tourist attraction.
News of Smith’s find spread quickly. In 1844, Major Robert Gill was commissioned by the Royal Asiatic Society to create reproductions on canvas of the wall paintings. This was the beginning of measures to reveal and document the prayer halls (chaityagrihas) and monasteries (viharas) that had, it seems, been hewn from solid rock in two phases, the first – five prayer halls – between the 1st and 2nd centuries BC and, the second – 25 monasteries, or monks’ lodgings – in the 5th Century AD.
Gill worked in truly difficult conditions. Not only was it often unbearably hot, but this was still tiger country, and the fierce Bhil people had never come to terms with invaders, whether Hindu or Moghul emperors or 19th Century British military.
Lost to time
What Gill and other visitors saw, having climbed ropes and ladders, to reach the caves – the original stone stairs had long gone – was architecture of a very high order and sculpture and paintings that took the breath away. Here, Buddhist monks had gazed on thousands of lustrous images of the lives the Buddha – Siddhartha Gautama – had lived before this 6th Century Indian prince took up teaching and inspired a way of thinking and being practiced by hundreds of millions around the world today.
Between images of the Buddha, were sensuous representations of glamorous princes and princesses, of animals, palaces, silks, jewellery, of lo******ng and life in all its mortal richness. Some of the images shocked Victorian sensibilities and are still condemned by religious zealots unable to comprehend that what these Indian artists saw was a joyous vision of natural fecundity and divine beauty.
Their meticulous restoration raised anew questions asked many times over the past 200 years. How did the artists paint so well, with such precise use of colour, in the dark recesses of these rock-carved prayer halls and monasteries? Just how many architects, masons, sculptors and painters would have been at work between from circa AD 460-500 when so much of this glorious place, paid for by merchants and courtiers during the reign of the Vakataka dynasty emperor Harisena, was created? And, in those brief years before the fall of the Vakataka empire and its patronage of Buddhist art, could this really have been a place of quiet contemplation when it must have been one vast building site?
The many archaeological ventures over the past two centuries seeking to answer these questions, as well as to uncover, document and conserve this feast of Buddhist creativity have added immeasurably to Ajanta’s fame, along with the tramp of ever increasing tourists. In 2013, four replica caves, created by the Mumbai-based designer Rakesh Rathod, were opened at the visitor centre 4km (2.5 miles) from the rock face. The idea was to reduce numbers heading to the precious chaityagrihasand viharas.
The fake caves, however, have not been a success: evidently, visitors want the real thing even though many clearly revel in the shopping bazaar and food stalls greeting anyone making pilgrimages to Ajanta today.
And, yet the serenity of the sleeping Buddha lying in one of the caves, the summer and winter solstice sunlight illuminating statues of the praying Buddha, the spellbinding architecture and the compelling beauty of the wall paintings lift Ajanta above such worldly concerns. This might be a tourist magnet, yet thanks to generations of conservationists, Ajanta remains a gateway to Nirvana.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our page or message us on Twitter.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150223-uncovering-caves-full-of-treasure
Art, Sculpture and Religion
