Hidden away in the hills of Northwest India, some 200 miles from Mumbai, emerge a magnificent jewel of art and religion: the Ajanta Caves. There are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BC to about 650 AD. The Ajanta cave paintings and rock cut sculptures are described as among the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian art, particularly expressive painting that present emotion through gesture, pose and form.
The entire site is a single sanctuary dedicated to Buddha and all his majesty is celebrated in the massive columns, the Majestic naves and also the numerous votive reliefs and ornaments. The most splendid feature is the painting cycles and sculpted reliefs which completely cover the caves’ walls and vaults. These paintings were meant to impart to the community the teachings of Buddha and his experiences during his various reincarnations. Devotees were supposed to walk through the cave and ‘read the paintings’, which were used as a medium of communicating Buddha’s teachings about ‘life through successive rebirth’.
The Ajanta wall paintings are famous for their masterful line-work, the use of natural pigments, the artistry achieved with only primitive tools, the sensual forms, and the harmony of the overall composition. The end result, we must remember, would have been viewed in semi-darkness with perhaps just some weak oil lamps to help make out the figures.
There are murals of handsome princes and bare-chested nobles, princesses with tiaras of jasmine languish love-lorn on swings and couches, while narrow-waisted dancing girls of extraordinary sensuousness, dressed only in their jewels and girdles, perform beside lotus ponds. Nearby are painted very different images of stark ascetic renunciation – a shaven-headed orange-robed monk lost in meditation, a hermit seeking salvation or a group of wizened devotees straining to hear the words of their teacher. Dominating everything are portraits of bodhisattvas of otherworldly beauty, elegance and compassion, eyes half-closed, swaying on the threshold of enlightenment, caught in what the great historian of Indian art, Stella Kramrisch, wonderfully described as "a gale of stillness".
The highly accurate pictorial technique used in Ajanta and the method of execution makes these wall paintings unique in the world. For many years these pictures were called frescoes, but this is an erroneous term in this case, and they are now referred to as murals, due to the fact that they were painted on a dry surface. The murals of Ajanta are now recognised as some of the greatest art produced by humankind in any century, as well as the finest picture gallery to survive from any ancient civilisation. Even today, the colours glow with a brilliant intensity: topaz-dark, lizard green, lotus-blue.
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