Ajanta Cave 26 in 200th Anniversary Year of Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings

Summary: Museum and published photographs and replicas of Ajanta cave wall paintings approximate Ajanta cave 26 paintings no longer available in their 200th year.

Buddha in parinirvana (final nirvana); left wall near small door, Ajanta Cave 26, Maharashtra, central-west India; March 10, 2017: Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Ajanta cave 26 adds less ancient, more angular and animated aspects to the 200th anniversary year of the first European ambling among the Ajanta cave wall paintings in central-north Maharashtra, central-west India.

Artisans and monks built the 2,000- to 2,200-plus-year-old Ajanta caves 9 and 10 before they built the 1,500- to 1,530-plus-year-old Ajanta caves 19, 26 and 27. Numbering systems for the Ajanta cave wall paintings communicate location, not excavation or exploration dates, from the upper end of a 1,968.5-foot- (600-meter-) long horseshoe-shaped cluster. The knife-carved John Smith, 28th cavalry, 28 April 1819, designates Ajanta cave 10 as the painted, sculpted excavation that detained the captain for the Madras presidency.

Major Robert Gill's (Sept. 26, 1804-April 10 1879) 35-year cataloguing, mapping, measuring, photographing and replicating the Ajanta Caves from 1844 onward ensued from the Smith explorations.

John Griffiths (Nov. 29, 1837-Dec. 1, 1918), Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art principal in Bombay, India, and students finished 300 replicas between 1872 and 1885.

Christiana Jane Powell Herringham (Dec. 8, 1852-Feb. 25, 1929) grouped Dorothy Larcher (Sept. 28, 1882-Aug. 14, 1952) with government school artists from Calcutta and Hyderabad, India. Nandalal Bose (Dec. 3, 1882-April 16, 1966), Samarendranath Gupta (1887-1964) and Asit Kumar Haldar (1890-1964) hailed from Calcutta and Syad Ahmed and Muhammad Fazluddin from Hyderabad. Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqi (April 6, 1886-Feb. 24, 1967), Asaf Jah VII and Nizam of Hyderabad State, implemented recording and restoring Ajanta cave wall paintings.

Ghulam Yazdani (March 22, 1885-Nov. 13, 1962) joined 3,000 documented, photographed, replicated, restored Ajanta cave wall paintings into Oxford University Press publications between 1930 and 1950.

Cave-by-cave onsite research kindled the seven-volume Ajanta: History and Development by Walter M. Spink, University of Michigan art historian at Ann Arbor, for Brill Academic Publishers.

The Crystal Palace in 1866 and the Imperial Institute in 1885 respectively lost 23 of 27 Gill and one-third of 300 Griffiths replicas to London fires. James Fergusson's (Jan. 22, 1808-Jan. 9, 1886) publications of the Gill photographs and the Spink and Yazdani volumes memorialize Ajanta cave wall paintings before massive tourism. Chaitya (from Sanskrit चैत्य, "funeral mound, pedestal, pile") cave 26 no longer nurses painted ceilings, side-aisle pradakshina (from Sanskrit प्रदक्षिण, "to the right-turning") pillars and walls.

Ribbed ceilings occur above sculpted upper-layer panels and lower-layer capitals (from Latin caput, "head") atop 26 left, apsidal (from Greek ἁψίς, hapsís, "arch") and right pillars.

The nave-like, oblong, rock-floored, sculpted, vaulted prayer hall possesses a sculpted seated Buddha (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened") on the apsidal stupa (from Greek स्तूप, "[memorial] dome").

Thirty-five-year-old, 39-year-old, 42-year-old and 80-year-old Buddha's bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa), contests with deathly Mara and unenlightened Sravastians, and death qualify as quintessential Ajanta cave 26 sculptures. The front verandah records Ajanta cave 26 as "a memorial on the mountain that will endure for as long as the moon and the sun continue." That statement by Bhavviraja, minister in central-west India's Asmaka kingdom, and monastic friend Buddhabhadra suggest Harishena's reign the last 25 years of the Vākātaka Empire (250?-500?).

Ajanta cave 26 tenders the fewest Ajanta cave wall paintings and most sculpted space of five chaitya caves in the 200th anniversary year of European access.

pradakshina (circumambulation) aisle view of feet of Buddha, in parinirvana (final nirvana) under bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa), and temptation of Buddha by Mara's daughters; central hall view of stupa with seated Buddha; Ajanta Cave 26, Maharashtra, central-west India; March 10, 2017: Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Buddha in parinirvana (final nirvana); left wall near small door, Ajanta Cave 26, Maharashtra, central-west India; March 10, 2017: Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anandajoti/34219037182/

pradakshina (circumambulation) aisle view of feet of Buddha, in parinirvana (final nirvana) under bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa), and temptation of Buddha by Mara's daughters; central hall view of stupa with seated Buddha; Ajanta Cave 26, Maharashtra, central-west India; March 10, 2017: Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anandajoti/33567363473/

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