By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
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Corbis
One of the few remaining fresco paintings of Buddha inside the caves.
When Unesco awarded the first World Heritage sites to India in 1983, it named four among the abundant cultural treasures of that vast country. Two were already world famous—the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. Two remain relatively unknown to this day, even though they are arguably more impressive to visit and more important to world culture. These rock-cut temples at Ellora and Ajanta are marvels of construction that immerse us in India's most enduring contributions to global civilization.
Ajanta is my favorite, both for its spectacular natural setting and its centuries-long devotion to one of India's great cultural traditions, Buddhism. Unlike the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, which are monuments of Mughal rule during the 16th and 17th centuries, Ajanta takes us back to a far earlier time—the seven centuries from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 500, a period that in Western Europe stretched from the middle of the Roman Republic through to the fall of the Empire. Moreover, the early Buddhism that created Ajanta was far from the hermetic spirituality we associate with Buddhism today.
Located 200 miles northeast of Mumbai in the immense lava field of the Deccan Plateau that covers much of central India, Ajanta was an isolated, jungle-covered ruin when an English officer rediscovered it in 1819 while hunting tigers. The site is a horseshoe-shaped gorge rising 250 feet above the Waghora River, which cut it from the volcanic rock and is still fed by a series of seven waterfalls that tumble from the heights above.
In the monsoon months, it is filled with lush vegetation and flowing streams. This is the season that prompted Buddhist monks to make the first of 30 prayer halls and monasteries that punctuate the cliff face. Originally, each was approached by a steep path from the river. Today, visitors follow a much less strenuous route, beginning at the level of the first cave on the east and moving along a causeway that connects the necklace of sites strung around the semicircular escarpment.
The early monks were wanderers who sheltered in natural caves and painstakingly transformed them into some of the grandest architecture of the age. Artisans carved the porous rock, working from the top of the excavation to the floor and from front porch to back wall. The work necessitated meticulous planning and a remarkable grasp of spatial position, since some of the interiors are more than 60 feet wide, 70 feet deep and 13 feet tall. These tremendous excavations were undertaken because in the first centuries B.C. Ajanta was not a wild place but a nexus of trade routes running the length of the peninsula and linking its coasts. At Ajanta, Buddhism joined hands with business.
Corbis
Prayer halls and monasteries were carved into the escarpment during an age when Ajanta was part of an important Indian trade route.
The famous "middle path" taught by Siddhartha Gautama (who was called Buddha and died about 400-350 B.C.) sought not only spiritual enlightenment through devotion and moderation but also worldly self-reliance and freedom from caste constraints. This focus on individual entrepreneurship meshed perfectly with the independent ways of merchants who were increasingly important and became patrons of Ajanta and other Buddhists monasteries along their trade routes.
Below the cliffs, the riverfront was probably lined with the merchants' booths and caravansaries, although these temporary structures have long since decayed to dust, leaving the majestic stone structures that anchored this new society. The earliest temples at Ajanta were collective undertakings intended to benefit the whole community rather than a single sponsor. The prayer halls are appropriately austere—great rooms ending in a rounded apse and lined with a massive colonnade. Their devotional focus is a large stupa, or mound, raised in honor of Buddha in the embracing apse. This is architecture as sculpture, without any ornament to distract from the elemental beauty of these deeply carved and subtly modulated cavities.
Perhaps even more than for these rock-cut structures, Ajanta is admired for its paintings, probably the finest extant series of ancient paintings anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, only a few distressed panels remain in the oldest caves. Yet the marvel of Ajanta is its longevity. After its original efflorescence, trade routes changed and the site lay dormant for about 500 years before it burst forth again in a brief but amazingly productive period approximately between A.D. 460 and 480.
This was India's "Golden Age," the period of the Gupta dynasty, whose patronage underwrote one of the world's greatest phases of art, literature and science. It was also a period when Buddhism abandoned its humble origins to merge with the aristocratic traditions of the Guptas and conceive Buddha as a king and god.
As one historian of India, John Keay, wrote, "At Ajanta more than anywhere the golden age of the Gupta is made manifest." These later shrines were patronized by the court and envisioned as palaces of Buddha. Prayer halls were not only enlarged but surrounded with ancillary chambers on the model of a regal residence, all richly encrusted with sculpture and painting. Miraculously, many of these paintings survive and the greatest of them reflect the full glory of this extravagant age.
Instead of a stupa, these temples present a monumental sculpture of Buddha, and they orchestrate profuse histories of his achievements along the passages leading to the sanctuary. In the finest of these temples (cave one), the final sculpture is framed by two painted panels that capture the incredible richness of the Gupta court with a subtlety unsurpassed by the art of any other age or place.
On either side of the portal through which one contemplates the statue of Buddha, a painting depicts one of his avatars sitting naked to the waist but wreathed with precious gems and crowned with a diadem of exquisite delicacy. On the right, Vajrapani, wielder of thunderbolts, glowers with the kingly strength of Buddha. On the left, Padmapani is exquisitely benign yet more compelling. Cradling a lotus flower as he seems to sway rhythmically, he glances downward: a supreme emblem of grace and spirituality amid wealth and power.
Walking the cliffside path among Ajanta's caves, the history of two of India's greatest ages and one of its religions envelops us until, in cave 26, we encounter a 23-foot-long sculpture of the recumbent Buddha, a monument to his death and final enlightenment.
—Mr. FitzGerald teaches the history of modern art at Trinity College.
