Ancient lure of Ajanta caves

Tumhi laukar nigha (You leave early),” insists Babu Pardeshi, the driver we had hired during our trip to Aurangabad and its environs, as he dropped us at our hotel. “The sun gets harsh later and it’s nearly a three-hour ride to Ajinta (Ajanta) Caves.”

In his mid-40s, Pardeshi is a chatterbox and a storehouse of gossip which he parades as information about everything related to Aurangabad. Around 7 am the next day, we are on our way to Ajintha Leni as the road signs mention the Ajanta Caves. The 100-odd km drive takes us through the countryside with tree trunks on both sides sporting stickers citing the name of hybrid varieties of wheat, cotton and onion standing on the fields.

Incidentally on a similar April morning in 1819, a British officer of the Madras Presidency had chanced upon the Ajanta Caves while on a tiger hunt. For over 1,300 years, the cave temples of Ajanta lay forgotten, existing in oblivion until John Smith happened. Historians are of the view that only a fraction of the Buddhist stupas, shrines and monasteries have survived as many of them were demolished in the 6th century by the Hun king Mihirakula, and later in medieval times, by the Turko Afghans.

Work on Ajanta caves started around the time the Egyptian general Scopas invaded Palestine and the Second Macedonian War began. That goes for the antiquity of the caves. The work on the caves ceased around 650 AD, when Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas had sailed from Ethiopia to China to establish the first mosque in China. Guide books prosaically inform that the caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BC, with the second group of caves built around 400-650 AD.

The taxi halts nearly 5 km away at the foothills of the cave site. Passing through a cluster of curio shops with the shop-helps pestering you to buy torch, hand fans, stone jewellery, idols etc., you reach the MTDC bus stop located in abundant greenery. The bus ride winds along the Waghora stream with bamboo and other deciduous trees dotting the entire area. During monsoon, streams and rivulets give it a picture-perfect appearance. Water falling from small waterfalls makes the trip enchanting. A Rs 10 entrance ticket takes you up the stone steps to the cluster of caves carved in the horse-shoe shaped cliff. The steps are many and those who find it difficult to make the climb hire palanquins, available for Rs 1,000 per trip.

Seen from a distance, the 29 cave shrines generally appear drab from outside — rough caverns hewn into dark grey rocky hill in a scrub jungle. But as you enter the shrine, you are overwhelmed by their majesty and solemnity. Every cave is numbered and some like caves 9, 10, 19 and 26 are well preserved. The floor-to-ceiling sculptures of Lord Buddha, some in Padmasana and a few in standing erect position, are awesome. The serenity of the sculptures brings a sort of calmness on the viewer. Besides the idols of Lord Buddha, there are plenty of his disciples, trees under which he would sit and meditate, animals like peacock, snakes, elephants and others carved equally intricately around the main deity.

The world-famous Ajanta paintings are visible in caves numbered 1, 2 and 17. Unbelievable that 2,000 years later the colours continue to be vibrant. Cave number 29 is the only one with the sculpture of a reclining Buddha. The sight leaves you awestruck, and you are assailed by numerous questions: who could have built them, how and why? Who could have been crazy enough to hire hundreds of workers for decades to raise these monuments to Gods?

According to historian Abraham Eraly in The First Spring: The Golden Age of India, the shrines were made by hewers and sculptors who initially hewed into the rock with pickaxe and later sculpted the detail carefully with hammer and chisel.

The storytelling nature of these early sculptures, and the low relief in which they are carved, give them the appearance of linear compositions. The Ram Kinkars or Hussains of that age paid scant attention to perspective, or to the unities of time and space. Diverse scenes and incidents from the past, present and future merge into each other — the ensemble drawing you and taking you on a stroll, as it happens in a dream.

The paintings mesmerise you as it did to historian A L Basham. “Here are princes in their palaces, ladies in their harems, coolies with loads slung over their shoulders, beggars, peasants and ascetics, together with all the many beasts and birds and flowers of India, in fact the whole life of the times. Everything is gracefully, masterfully drawn and delicately modelled,” he noted in The Wonder that was India.

Five of the caves were temples while the 24 monasteries were thought to have been occupied by some 200 monks and artisans. Unable to move around during the monsoon months, the Buddhist monks retreated to this inaccessible but serene place for deepening their religious quest through prayer and discussion. Then, each cave was connected to the stream by a flight of steps, but now few remnants are left behind.

If you are a connoisseur of art and believe that art has its own language and communicates differently to each person, then avoid the services of a guide. On entering a cave, watch a painting or a sculpture and do a shut-eye letting the images take you to those ancient times when these were created, much before the Christian era. Each artisan having arrived from villages afar everyday in the morning with his tools and leaving as darkness fell having interpreted the stories in stone or paints related to Buddha in his own way. Or imagining how he may have spent his youth and middle age just carving a piece of the cliff. The epiphany he may have experienced having finished a giant sculpture of Buddha, a Bodhisattva (potential Buddha’s), or a Tara (female Buddhist divinities), as also a dwarapala (doorkeeper). Constant chattering guides can be a source of irritation, but you need to get used to them.

On return and before boarding the bus which takes you back to the taxi stand, do go for a simple meal at the MTDC hotel as you listen to the twitter of birds and watch squirrels running around tree trunks.