200th Anniversary Year of Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings: Ajanta Cave 11

Summary: Ajanta cave 11 appears as donation center, food repository and monastery in the 200th anniversary year of Ajanta cave wall paintings in central-west India.

verandah of Ajanta Cave 11, photographed by Major Robert Gill; J. Fergusson and R. Gill, The Rock-Cut Temples of India (1864), page 13: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ajanta cave 11 assumes the accumulated aspects of donation center, food repository and monastery cavern in the 200th anniversary year of European access to Ajanta cave wall paintings in Maharashtra state, India.

Itinerant artisans and monks built Ajanta cave 6 and Ajanta cave 11 as monastery caverns with dormitory cells and storage vaults during the second excavation phase. They constructed Ajanta cave 6 and Ajanta cave 11 as central repositories even though they carried out similar, smaller-scale storage vaults for other monastery cavern floors. Resident monks distributed Ajanta cave 6 and Ajanta cave 11 contents to the entire community even though artisans designed diminutive vaults elsewhere for host-cave use only.

Perhaps political enmity between Asmaka kings and the third- through fifth-century Vakataka dynasty's Ajanta subkings elicited itinerant artisans exiting before ending excavations of Ajanta cave 11.

Walter M. Spink, Ajanta cave wall paintings specialist and University of Michigan Emeritus Professor of Art History in Ann Arbor since 2000, favors two 20-year excavations.

The Spink calculations group the first and second excavations respectively between 90 and 70 B.C. and 460 and 480, with the latter generating Ajanta cave 11. Sixteen-hundred-year-old, 65.19- by 56.92-foot (19.87- by 17.3-meter) Ajanta cave 11 has a pillared veranda to four cells and a sanctum sanctorum (from Latin, "holy of holies"). The painted, sculpted interior includes the lower-level floor vault for donation and food storage and the upper-level hall, with a long bench, to six dormitory cells.

Modern tourists, like ancient visitors, journey to the eleventh stop from the upper east end in the 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings.

Ajanta cave 11 keeps an eastern volcanic basalt rock wall in common with Ajanta prayer hall cave 10 and a western with Ajanta monastery cave 12.

John K. Smith, 28th Cavalry Captain for the Madras presidency and great-great-great-grandfather of Colonel Henry Martin Lockhead Smith, looked into Ajanta cave 10 April 28, 1819. He marked a rear-aisle pillar with John Smith, 28th Cavalry, April 28, 1819, before moving, or not, in and out of the 1,968.5-foot- (600-meter) long complex. Chaitya (from Sanskrit चैत्य, "funeral mound, pedestal, pile") prayer hall caves 9, 10, 19, 26 and 29 necessitated vihara (from Sanskrit विहार, "walking [hall]") monastery caves.

Ajanta cave 11 offers the 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings a monastery, pantry and storage cavern for Ajanta's oldest chaitya cave 10.

The painted, sculpted surfaces of Ajanta cave 11 present Sakyan Crown Prince Siddhartha (624?-544 B.C.?, from Sanskrit गौतम, "successful") as pursuing enlightenment through 550 successive reincarnations.

Ajanta cave 11 qualifies as a painted, sculpted jataka (from Sanskrit जातक, "born under") tale about bodhisattva (from Sanskrit बोधि, "perfect knowledge" and सत्त्व, "essence") reincarnations. It renders the final, 550th reincarnation in enlightened Prince Siddhartha revealing himself as 35- to 80-year-old Gautama Buddha (from Sanskrit गौतम, "dark-dispelled light" and बुद्ध, "awakened"). What stopped artisans sculpting stupa (from Sanskrit स्तूप, "[memorial] dome") surfaces to Buddha sculpted as sharing non-extravagant, non-mortiyfing wheels of truth in the Isipatana deer park?

Ajanta cave 11 tells tourists in the 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings that well-fed, well-rested, well-taught travelers once thronged the Ajanta Caves.

Buddha with kneeling devotee, deer and lions in Ajanta Cave 11; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Thursday, March 9, 2017, 00:57: Photo Dharma (Anandajoti Bhikkhu) from Sadao, Thailand, CC BY 2.0 Generic, 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:

verandah of Ajanta Cave 11, photographed by Major Robert Gill; J. Fergusson and R. Gill, The Rock-Cut Temples of India (1864), page 13: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verandah_of_Cave_No._11—Ajunta.jpg;
Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/rockcuttemplesof00ferg/page/n78/mode/1up;
via Wikisource @ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rock-cut_Temples_of_India/The_Caves_of_Ajunta/Verandah_of_Cave_No._11%E2%80%94Ajunta

Buddha with kneeling devotee, deer and lions in Ajanta Cave 11; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, west-central India; Thursday, March 9, 2017, 00:57: Photo Dharma (Anandajoti Bhikkhu) from Sadao, Thailand, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091_Cave_11,_Buddha_with_Sujata_(33438500784).jpg;
Anandajoti Bhikkhu (anandajoti), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anandajoti/33438500784/

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