200th Anniversary Year of Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings: Ajanta Cave 8

Summary: Ajanta cave 8 acts as utility room, not as monastery, for Ajanta cave wall paintings and sculptures in their 200th anniversary year of European access.

external view of Ajanta Cave 8, which is located below the walkway between Cave 7 and Cave 9; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Oct. 26, 2017: Akshatha Inamdar, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ajanta cave 8 appears not at all among Ajanta caves available to tourists in the 200th anniversary year of Ajanta cave wall paintings in Maharashtra state, central-west India.

Ajanta cave 8 and Ajanta caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A/30 belong to the first building phase, from the third through the first centuries B.C. It no longer conserves clearly or competitively with Ajanta caves 12, 13 and 15A/30 the painted, sculpted configuration of the most ancient Ajanta dormitory cave cells. Addition of footpaths, construction of veranda door and window guards and installation of guardrails and lights do a disservice to Ajanta Caves' landslide-prone, shaky rock foundations.

John K. Smith, 28th Cavalry Captain for the Madras presidency and Colonel Henry Martin Lockhead Smith's great-great-grandfather, encountered 1,300- to 2,300-year-old, well-preserved caves April 28, 1819.

Major Robert Gill (Sept. 26, 1804-April 10, 1879) fit reproducing Ajanta cave wall paintings in-between felling 250 tigers and filling Ajanta cave walls with Victorian varnish.

Mir Osman, Ali Khan Siddiqi (April 6, 1886-Feb. 24, 1967), Asaf Jah VII and Nizam of Hyderabad, gathered Italian conservationists who glazed walls with unbleached shellac. No more tigers heralded more invertebrate and small vertebrate wastes that further harmed dark-shellacked, dark-varnished Ajanta cave wall paintings subsequently hurt by glaring electric lighting installations. Ajanta cave 8 artisans and monks, like those for all Ajanta caves, intended incoming moonlight, starlight and sunlight and inflamed candles, oils and torches as illumination.

Only Ajanta caves and Archaeological Survey of India staff journey through landslide-jostled Ajanta cave 8 in their 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings.

Resident monks kept candle, oil and torch lights in now unknown arrangements to kindle specific viewing knowledge of Ajanta cave wall paintings and painted, sculpted pillars.

Ajanta cave 8 paintings and sculptures lauded Kshatriya (from Sanskrit क्षत्रिय, "protector of gentle people") Prince Siddhartha Gautama (624?-544 B.C.?) as Buddha (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened"). They modeled him as Sangha (from Sanskrit संघ, "multitude") community teacher for artisan, merchant and monk occupants of their vihara (from Sanskrit विहार, "walking [hall]") cells. They noted the 35-year-old's self-enlightening, seven-day trance lotus-positioned atop kusa grass (Desmostachya bipinnata) under the Neranjara River bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa) in ancient India's Magadha kingdom.

Ajanta cave 8 paintings and sculptures once offered instructional mudra (from Sanskrit मुद्रा, "seal") about the turning wheel of truth in ancient India's Isipatana deer park.

Ajanta cave 8 and its contemporaneous Ajanta vihara caves 12, 13 and 15A/30 visually presented itinerant artisans, merchants and monks and resident monks Four Noble Truths.

The Ajanta cave 8 illustrated, instructional Noble Eightfold Middle Path queued non-extravagant, non-mortifying, right understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration against desire-prompted suffering. Ajanta cave 8 reveals rare, residual Ajanta cave wall paintings and sculptures as the landslide-ruined, off-limits residence of electrical generator systems for the 30-cavern Ajanta Caves. Ajanta caves 12 and 13 show similar but signature spins on the self-enlightening, self-instructive vihara standards that their contemporaneous dormitory, Ajanta cave 8, no longer sustains.

Electrical generator systems in landslide-troubled and tumbled-down Ajanta cave 8 turn bright lights on Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year of European access.

ground plan of Ajanta Cave 8; 1850 pen-and-ink and wash drawing by Madras Army Major Robert Gill (Sept. 26, 1804-April 10, 1879); British Library collection: Public Domain, 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:

external view of Ajanta Cave 8, which is located below the walkway between Cave 7 and Cave 9; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Oct. 26, 2017: Akshatha Inamdar, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ajanta_Cave_8_exterior_view.jpg

ground plan of Ajanta Cave 8; 1850 pen-and-ink and wash drawing by Madras Army Major Robert Gill (Sept. 26, 1804-April 10, 1879); British Library collection: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_Plan_of_Cave_8_and_Cave_25,_Ajanta,_1850_sketch_08.jpg

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