Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 Adds the Most Area to Ellora Buddhist Caves

Summary: Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 assumes the most area, the second most ancient aspects and two building assignments at Buddhist Ellora Caves in Maharashtra, India.

looking outward in Ellora Buddhist Cave 5; Saturday, March 4, 2017, 23:24: Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 attests to the most area, the second most ancient cavern adorational architecture and art and two buildings assignments among Buddhist Ellora Caves in Maharashtra state, western peninsular India.

Itinerant artisans, merchants and monks built Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 as the biggest vihara (from Sanskrit विहार, "walking [hall]") cavern temple monastery among Buddhist Ellora Caves. They commenced Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 after they completed Ellora Buddhist Cave 6, cavern temple monastery that converted less cliff basalt into an excavated, carved configuration. Cavern temple monastery designs and details demanded dividing developing Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 between two dates, with the second dateline devoted to the delayed right wing.

Expansive, exquisite Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 perhaps ensured that Buddhist Ellora Caves emerged, established and endured even as Buddhist Ajanta Caves, on equivalent trade routes, expired.

Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 perhaps functioned as a multi-storied cavern temple monastery with eating, living, meeting and sleeping furnishings for more fortunate artisans, merchants and monks.

Kshatriya (from Sanskrit क्षत्रिय, "protector of gentle people") warrior and Vaishya (from Sanskrit वैश्य, "soil-settler") merchant castes generated enlightened Prince Siddhartha Gautama's (624?-544 B.C.E.?) first followers. Trade routes headed Siddhartha Gautama (from Sanskrit सिद्धार्थ, "successful" and गोतम, "darkness-dispelling light"), as Gautama Buddha (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened"), southward from his Kshatriyan, royal family. Collateral and direct descendants of Gautama converts itinerated father southward, into ancient Maharashtra, where tolerant dynasts and emperors never impeded cavern temple installations for meditation-impelled itinerants.

Perhaps ascetic itinerants journeyed less to Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 than to Ajanta Caves' austerer cavern temple monasteries from the third through the first centuries B.C.E.

Second-phase excavations from the fifth through the sixth, seventh or eighth centuries at Ajanta Caves kindled cavern temple monastery cells predictive of Ellora Buddhist Cave 5.

Douglas Barrett, in Painting of India, for the Skira publishing firm, 1963, looks at Deccan (from Sanskrit dakshina, दक्षिणा, "south") links in Ajanta and Ellora Caves. Ellora Buddhist Cave 5, unlike the North Deccan-manipulated Ajanta Caves 60 miles (96.59 kilometers) away, manifests less ascetic, seventh-century South Deccan cavern adorational architecture and art. Perhaps more numerous itinerants needing more niceties than anticipated nudged a right wing for Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 between excavating Ellora Buddhist Caves 3 and 4.

Full occupancy perhaps obstructed optimal organization of communal and individual observances of walking meditations by Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 overnighters even without overnighters from other caverns.

Perhaps full presences at and waiting lists for Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 pushed itinerant artisans, merchants and monks toward more, albeit petiter, cavern temple monastery production.

Slow-queuing walkling meditations at Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 perhaps qualified as incentives for the sole, subsequent Ellora Buddhist cavern prayer hall at Ellora Buddhist Cave 20. Itinerant artisans, merchants and monks and their sponsors perhaps realized less realistic room dimensions and purposes at Buddhist Ajanta Caves than at Ellora Buddhist Cave 5. They, and perhaps collateral and direct descendants, stopped showing up at Ajanta Caves even as they meditated and slept at Ellora Buddhist Cave 5.

Ellora Buddhist Cave 5 teamed with Ellora Buddhist Caves 10 and 1 through 4, 6 through 9, 11 and 12 for on-site meditation and temple sleepovers.

closeup of pillar in Ellora Buddhist Cave 5; Saturday, March 4, 2017, 23:25: Photo Dharma 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:

looking outward in Ellora Buddhist Cave 5; Saturday, March 4, 2017, 23:24: Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:162_Cave_5,_Looking_Out_(33311923014).jpg; Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anandajoti/33311923014/

closeup of pillar in Ellora Buddhist Cave 5; Saturday, March 4, 2017, 23:25: Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:179_Cave_5,_Pillar_Patterning_(33769660660).jpg; Anandajoti Bhikkhu (Anandajoti), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anandajoti/33769660660/

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