200th Anniversary Year of Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings: Ajanta Cave 12

Summary: Ajanta cave 12 affords audiences ancient aspects of monastery life in the 200th anniversary year of Ajanta cave wall paintings in Maharashtra, India.

The collapsed front wall of Ajanta Cave 12, carved as an early stage Hinayana (Theravada) monastery (vihara) of 12 cells, allows for view of the cave's three inner sides, with each side housing four cells: Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Sept. 5, 2016: Anupamg, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ajanta cave 12 accommodates audiences appreciative of ancient architecture and art in the 200th anniversary year of European access to Ajanta cave wall paintings and sculptures in central-north Maharashtra state, central-west India.

Itinerant artisans and monks built Ajanta cave 12, downward from the ceiling to the floor, during the first excavation of the 1,300- to 2,300-year-old Ajanta Caves. Ajanta cave 12 constitutes the 12th cave from the horseshoe-shaped, 1,968.5-foot- (600-meter-) long Ajanta Caves' upper end above the Waghora (from Sanskrit व्याघ्र, "tiger") River bend. Ajanta cave 12 and Ajanta caves 8, 13 and 15A/30 designate Ajanta's four oldest vihara (from Sanskrit विहार, "walking [hall]") dwellings for artisans, merchants and monks.

Perhaps Ajanta cave 12 evokes rainy-season sleep-overs by the second Buddha, whose Sanskrit monikker अजित (Ajita, "invincible") perhaps explains enigmatic etymologies of Ajanta Caves' namesake village.

Ajanta cave 12 formerly fit within an enclosed 48.88-foot- (14.9-meter-) long, 58.46-foot- (17.82-meter-) wide floor plan with one side functioning as the entry and exit façade.

Itinerant artisans and monks ground tunnels into horizontal layers of flood basalt rock that gave Waghora glen extensions of the Deccan Plateau Traps near-perpendicular cliff faces. They headed their cliff-face tunnels into collapse- and landslide-prone rock downward from ceiling to floor levels and outward, back and forth between east-west and north-south walls. Ajanta cave 12 included the rectangular integration of a screened façade with an exterior onto the veranda and an interior onto three walls with cell doors.

Itinerant artisans and merchants and itinerant and resident monks journeyed through screened veranda doors into a court with four cell doors in each of three walls.

Itinerant artisans and monks kept their 2,000- to 2,300-year-old court astylar (without columns or pilasters, from Greek ἁ-, a-, "out" and στῦλος, stûlos, "column, pillar, support").

The central court lacks the Ajanta cave wall paintings and painted, sculpted ceilings and pillars that leave other caverns black, blue, green, red, white and yellow. It models flat floors and low ceilings for three walls that manifest a window-arched shrine niche between, and a window arch above, each of 12 doors. An inscription on the back wall, in script perhaps from the second or first century B.C., notes Ajanta cave 12 as gifted by the merchant Ghanamadada.

Ajanta cave 12 offers an unaccessorized suite, in semi-open air, for undecorated doubles in the 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings and sculptures.

Buddhist texts predict the next Buddha (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened"), Maitreya (from Sanskrit मैत्रेय, "benevolent"), 5,000 years after his immediate predecessor, Prince Siddhartha Gautama (624?-544 B.C.?).

Pre-enlightened Siddhartha Gautama (from Sanskrit गौतम, "successful" and गौतम, "bright light [dispels] darkness") Buddha, like Maitreya currently, queued up 550 bodhisattva (from Sanskrit बोधिसत्त्व, "enlightened existence") lifetimes. Perhaps Maitreya, during perhaps the fifth of perhaps six bodhisattva lifetimes since Gautama Buddha's lifetime, rested on one of 24 Ajanta cave 12 stone-sculpted, stone-pillowed beds. Maitreya's 500 bodhisattva lifetimes before the sixth millennium, like Gautama Buddha's bodhisattva lives before his 550th as Prince Siddhartha, stress middle paths between self-absorption and self-mortification.

The 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings perhaps tenders Ajanta cave 12 as between the middle and most austere of vihara monastery caverns.

section of chaitya ornamentation and Buddhist rail pattern (above) and plan (below) of Ajanta Cave 12; drawn by Henry Cousens (Sept. 13, 1854-Nov. 5, 1933) of Archaeological Survey of Western India under superintendence of Scottish archaeologist James Burgess (Aug. 14, 1832-Oct. 3, 1916); J. Fergusson and J. Burgess, The Cave Temples of India (1880), Plate XXVII: Public Domain, via Internet Archive

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

The collapsed front wall of Ajanta Cave 12, carved as an early stage Hinayana (Theravada) monastery (vihara) of 12 cells, allows for view of the cave's three inner sides, with each side housing four cells: Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Sept. 5, 2016: Anupamg, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ajanta_Caves_72.jpg

section of chaitya ornamentation and Buddhist rail pattern (above) and plan (below) of Ajanta Cave 12; drawn by Henry Cousens (Sept. 13, 1854-Nov. 5, 1933) of Archaeological Survey of Western India under superintendence of Scottish archaeologist James Burgess (Aug. 14, 1832-Oct. 3, 1916); photo lithography by English printer and inventor William Griggs (Oct. 4, 1832-Dec. 7, 1911); J. Fergusson and J. Burgess, The Cave Temples of India (1880), Plate XXVII: Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/cavetemplesofind00ferguoft/page/n615

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