Place · rock-cut vihara complex · India

Ajantā caves

Also known as Ajanta Caves, Ajantā

Function

Religious institution & practice

Tradition

Vakataka and Satavahana donative inscriptions

Confidence

Established / referenced

Location

20.552, 75.703

Connections (9)

• Succession in timeSānchī

  Ajanta was stumbled on by a British hunting party in 1819 and Sanchi was cleared and studied from the 1850s, so Buddhist India re-entered view through two accidents of the colonial century — one a painted cave complex abandoned for a thousand years, the other a stupa that had been standing in plain sight and was badly damaged by early treasure-hunting before Marshall's restoration. Neither site had any continuous Buddhist presence to rediscover.

• Architectural modelEllorā

  Ajantā is cut, painted and abandoned by about 480; Ellora begins a century later four hours away and carries the same tradition into Hindu and Jain excavation, ending at Kailāsa, which is carved downward from the hilltop as one piece. The Deccan's rock-cutting is continuous across the religions. Ajantā was then lost entirely until a British hunting party came on it in 1819, while Ellora was never forgotten and appears in medieval and Mughal accounts alike.

• Architectural modelDambulla Cave Temple

  Dambulla and Ajantā are the two great surviving bodies of South Asian cave painting, and they differ in one decisive way: Ajantā was abandoned about 480 and its paintings are fifth-century, while Dambulla has been repainted continuously, so its walls are a living surface rather than a preserved one. Dambulla's five caves hold some two thousand square metres of painting over a hundred and fifty Buddha images, and the earliest layers are under later ones rather than beside them.

• Companion in the same setPitalkhora Caves

  Pitalkhora in its ravine and Ajantā in its gorge are both on the roads between the Deccan plateau and the Konkan coast, about a hundred kilometres apart. Pitalkhora is the earlier and much the more damaged, but its Sātavāhana yaksha figures are among the finest early sculpture in the Deccan.

• Architectural modelKārlā Caves

  Karla's chaitya of the first century BCE and Ajanta's Cave 19 and 26 of the fifth century CE are the two ends of the same hall type — apsidal plan, barrel vault, stupa at the far end, a screen and a great horseshoe window over the door. What changes in six hundred years is that the wooden ribs become carved stone imitations of wooden ribs, and the plain stupa acquires a standing Buddha on its front, because by then there were images.

• In the same set asEllorā

  Ajanta and Ellora were inscribed in the same year, are a hundred kilometres apart, and do not overlap in time: Ajanta's two phases end about 480 and Ellora's excavation begins in the sixth century and runs to the tenth. Ajanta is Buddhist and holds the painting; Ellora is Buddhist, Hindu and Jain in one cliff and holds the architecture cut as sculpture.

• Route adjacencyKānchī / Kānchīpuram / Kanchipuram

  Kanchipuram was the southern limit and the Ajanta gorge is on the road back north, so the western Deccan leg of the journey is the one that closes his circuit of the peninsula. His notice of the painted caves is the only pre-modern mention of the site between its abandonment about 480 and its rediscovery by a tiger-shooting party in 1819.

• Site withinAurangabad / Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar

  The Ajanta Caves sit 99 kilometres north of Aurangabad on the Waghora river gorge, within Aurangabad district and under the ASI's Aurangabad circle. The city's Mughal and Nizami administrators from the seventeenth century treated the caves as part of the Aurangabad hinterland, and the ASI office in the city still runs the Ajanta conservation and visitor programme. The caves are reached from Aurangabad as the regional base.

• Site adjacencyJalgaon

  The Ajanta Caves sit 60 kilometres south of Jalgaon city on the Satmala range escarpment, in the Jalgaon-Aurangabad border region of Maharashtra. The 2-century BCE to 7-century CE Buddhist rock-cut cave complex is reached from the Jalgaon railway station via the 1819 John Smith rediscovery route. Jalgaon has served as the modern commercial gateway for Ajanta tourism since the 1860s Great Indian Peninsula Railway opening. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.

On these journeys

• Dakshiṇāpatha — the Great Southern Road
• UNESCO World Heritage — cultural
• Rock-cut Buddhism
• Xuanzang — sixteen years overland (629–645)

Sources

Ajanta Caves — UNESCO

• Wikipedia