Ajanta Cave 19 in 200th Anniversary Year of Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings

Summary: Ajanta cave 19 aligns artistically between aged Ajanta caves 9 and 10 and less aged 26 and 29 in the 200th anniversary year of Ajanta cave wall paintings.

exterior of chaitya Cave 19, drawn on stone by English watercolourist T.C. (Thomas Colman) Dibdin (Oct. 22, 1810-Dec. 26, 1893) from sketch by Scottish architectural historian James Fergusson (Jan. 22, 1808-Jan. 9, 1886); J. Fergusson's Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India (1845), Plate VI: Public Domain, via Internet Archive

Ajanta cave 19 assumes a less ancient and assailed, more angular aspect than Ajanta cave 9 in the 200th anniversary year of the first European approaching the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India.

Ajanta cave 19, unlike 9 and 10, belongs to the second building phrase, between the fourth and sixth, seventh or eighth centuries in central-north Maharashtra state. The captain for the Madras presidency and Colonel Henry Martin Lockhart Smith's great-great-grandfather carved John Smith, 28th cavalry, 28 April 1819, into Ajanta cave 10 artwork. Ajanta cave 19 painting styles dominate 2,000- to 2,200-plus-year-old Ajanta caves 9 and 10 except on their respective end and left and left and right walls.

Artisans and monks enigmatically excavated Ajanta cave 19 as an elaborated, expanded equivalent of Ajanta caves 9 and 10 than of Ajanta caves 26 and 29.

Ajanta caves 9 and 10 and Ajanta caves 19, 26 and 29 function as chaitya (from Sanskrit चैत्य, "funeral mound, pedestal or pile") prayer meeting halls.

Yaksha (nature-spirit, from Sanskrit यक्ष) dvarapala (from Sanskrit द्वारपाला, "guardian [of god Kubera's wealth]") guard the Ajanta cave 19 façade's vatayana (from Sanskrit वातायन, "[arched] window"). Sculpted naga (from Sanskrit नाग, "serpent") and yaksha helpers of Buddha (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened") and merchants perhaps hinder harm to those heading through façade doorways. Ajanta cave wall paintings inundate all Ajanta cave 19 walls, from side to side and top to bottom, to the nave-like, vaulted hall with 15 pillars.

Ancient Ajanta cave 19 artisans, merchants and monks journeyed clockwise between left, apsidal (from Greek ἁψίς, hapsís, "arch") and right Ajanta cave wall paintings and pillars.

Ajanta cave 19 knits left, apsidal and right pradakshina (side aisles, from Sanskrit प्रदक्षिण, "to the right-turning") together behind its apsidal stupa (from Sanskrit स्तूप, "memorial").

Its stupa, from whose front side a sculpted, standing Buddha looks out, lauds the stone-sculpted location of Buddha's ashes 1,000-plus years previously in Lumbini, southern Nepal. Left, apsidal and right Ajanta cave wall paintings and pillars manifest the enlightened Siddhartha Gautama (624?-544 B.C.?) as Buddha through hand-gesturing mudra (from Sanskrit मुद्रा, "finger-positioning"). Douglas Barrett and Basil Gray of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum in London, England, note painting as adjunct to sculpture in their Painting of India.

Ajanta cave 19 offers the 200th anniversary year obliterated ceiling paintings above u-looped sculpted panels above sculpted capitals (from Latin caput, "head") atop obscured pillar paintings.

Sculpted capitals, façade and panels present folkloric, instructive, meditative, symbolic jataka (from Sanskrit जातक, "born under") biographies and mudra more permanently than Ajanta cave wall paintings.

Elephants queue up Buddha as the bodhisattva (from Sanskrit बोधि, "perfect knowledge" and सत्त्व, "essence") King Chaddanta ("six-tusked") whose jealous Queen Chullasubhadda quickens his death and hers. Horse, lotus and mother with child reliefs recall Siddhartha's favorite mount Kanthaka, seat of enlightenment under bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa) and wife Yasodhara with son Rahula. Mother with child also suggests the seeker of a shelter, where nobody succumbed to death, for sowing mustard seeds to snatch her son back from death.

Ajanta cave 19 truculently transmits mass-enlightening painted, sculpted tales despite the time, traffic and trauma that trouble Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year.

Buddha with Mother and Child sculpture, right side of Cave 19 entrance facade; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, central-west India; July 29, 2014: Akshatha Inamdar, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

exterior of chaitya Cave 19, drawn on stone by English watercolourist T.C. (Thomas Colman) Dibdin (Oct. 22, 1810-Dec. 26, 1893) from sketch by Scottish architectural historian James Fergusson (Jan. 22, 1808-Jan. 9, 1886); J. Fergusson's Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India (1845), Plate VI: Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008543106/page/n22

Buddha with Mother and Child sculpture, right side of Cave 19 entrance facade; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, central-west India; July 29, 2014: Akshatha Inamdar, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ajanta_Cave_19,_before_entrance_door,_right_side,_the_Mother_and_Child_scene_with_the_Buddha_and_begging_bowl.jpg

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