The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c17: Chapter XI. Ancient Indian Universities—The University of Ajantâ—Vishnu's Last Avatar
The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c17
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Chapter XI. Ancient Indian Universities—The University of Ajantâ—Vishnu's Last Avatar
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THE universities of India were not, however, a creation of the Gupta period. Even as far back as the time of Buddha, Taksha-silâ, the capital of Gandhâra—now a heap of ruins near Rawalpindi—was a famous seat of Indo-Aryan learning. Chânakya, the famous Brahman statesman who was Chandragupta Maurya's War Minister and most trusted counsellor, and Pânini, the great Sanskrit grammarian, graduated there.
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Two more of its *alumni*, Gobharana and Mâtanga, in A.D. 67 carried Buddhist learning into China, and in the Gupta period crowds of Chinese students were flocking to its halls. Kâsî (Benares) also, in the Buddha's time, was as now a stronghold of Brahman philosophy. Nâgârjuna, the Brahman protagonist of Mahâyâna Buddhism, founded the university at Sûdhanya Kataka, on the head waters of the Krishna River. He himself resided at Nâlanda, the famous university of the Magadha country, near Rajgriha, which in the seventh century was attended by ten thousand learned monks and scholars. Hiuen Tsang, who lived there for five years, describes its towering monastic walls, resplendent with colour and sculpture; its eight quadrangles and lofty enclosing walls; its pavilions "like pointed hill-tops, its soaring domes and pinnacles which seemed to be lost in the mists of the morning." "From their windows," he said, "one could watch the movements of the
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PLAN OF AJANTÁ
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FAÇADE OF COLLEGE HALL NO. I, AJAṆṬĀ
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winds and clouds, and above their lofty roofs the sun and moon can be seen in conjunction.”
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He was delighted with its shady groves and gardens; the pools of translucent water shining with the open petals of the blue lotus flowers; the kanaka trees with deep red blossoms, and the pleasant retreats under the dark-leaved mango trees. “There were thousands of Sanghârâmas in India,” he wrote, “but none equal to like the holy Ganges rushing out into the plains at Hardwar. Higher up the ravine ends as a precipice, over which the torrent pours from the wooded heights above in seven falls (*sât kund*), as Gangâ leaps through the matted locks of Siva's hair in the forests of Himâlaya.
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Gradually the fame of these saintly men spread over the country side. Ajantâ became a place of learning, and many pious benefactors helped to cut monastic halls and chapels deep in the hard trap rock. According to the Western scientific way of writing history, there are four series of excavations, representing as many successive periods. The Indian historian would classify them differently, but we will begin with the Western method. The first to be excavated were the monastic halls now known as Nos. XIII, XII, XI, and VIII, and the chaitya-houses Nos. IX and X, which belong to the second and first centuries B.C. Their axes point to the north or north-east, for they were the dwellings of an austere community of monks who did not adore the Buddha as the rising sun, but meditated upon his Pari-Nirvâna, associated with the north side of the Aryan village, which symbolised the night sky. Their asceticism is further reflected in the simplicity of the pillars of the Sangha in the chaitya-houses (fig. 30), which are plain
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FIG. 47.—Hînayâna Sun-windows, Chaitya-house No. IX, Ajantâ.
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VERANDAH OF COLLEGE HALL NO. II, AJANTÂ
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octagonal shafts, without caps or bases, and in the absence of any elaborate sculpture except some of later date than the original excavations. Fine craftsmanship, however, is shown in the polished walls of the small vihâra, No. XIII. Both chaitya-houses had painted decoration, renewed at various times.
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FIG. 48.—Monastic Hall or College No. VII, Ajantâ.
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To the east of this early group, occupying the centre of the “digit of the moon,”¹ comes the second one, including the vihâras numbered XIV to XVIII and the chaitya-house No. XIX, which embrace a period commencing about the second century A.D. and ending about the fifth. Vihâra XV can be definitely dated *circa* A.D. 185, and XVII and XVIII come within the reign of Vikramâditya of Magadha, an inscription showing that it was dedicated by the king of the Vâkâtakas, whose queen was a daughter of the great Gupta emperor.
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¹ See preface to Professor F. W. Bain’s delightful Hindu romance. The disc of the moon is divided into sixteen parts, called “streaks” or digits; a beautiful woman being called “a digit of the moon.”
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On the other side of the earliest group, or at the western tip of the moon’s crescent, are the monastic halls numbered I to VI, most of which belong to the seventh century, and right opposite to them, at the other extremity, is the fourth group, standing apart from the other three and facing the setting sun. This includes the vihâras or colleges numbered XX to XXV and the magnificent chaityahouse XXVI, which are the last and most elaborate of the four groups; some of them remained unfinished.
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The whole of this splendid series, therefore, is a record of Indian architectural design from about the time of the Kârlê Chaitya-house to the break-up of Harsha’s empire in the middle of the seventh century.
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FIG. 49.—Monastic Hall or College No. VI, Ajantâ.
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It is unnecessary to go again over the ground covered by the preceding chapters, so we will begin by comparing the finest of the monastic halls, Nos. I and II, in the third group (Pl. XLI—XLIII) with the Gautamîputra monastery at Nâsik (Pl. XXII), in order to show the development of the Indo-Aryan architectural tradition in the Gupta period. The plan of the Ajantâ hall, fig. 50, is practically the same as the one at Nâsik, only, instead of a simple stûpa symbol on the walls of the cells, a great image of the Buddha as the Teacher is sculptured within a cubical cell on the side facing the entrance. The verandah front (Pl. XLI) is supported by six massive columns, as at Nâsik, but an entrance porch had been added in the middle of it. This unfortunately has completely fallen away.
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Archæologists have remained completely in the dark as to the connection of the Ajantâ craft tradition with that of Kârlê, Nâsik, and the earlier Hînayâna school. Dr. Burgess only repeats Fergusson’s puerile remark that the beautiful “Perse-
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INTERIOR OF COLLEGE HALL NO. II, AJANTA
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politan bell-shaped” capitals are superseded at Ajantâ by a “pudding-shape.” The explanation of the symbolism of Indian pillars given above will enable the reader to see that the Ajantâ type is also the traditional Vishnu pillar. Considering the difference of age—about four and a half centuries—there is comparatively little change in the forms, only at Ajantâ there is a more voluptuous feeling for beauty, more classic refinement of detail, and a closer searching for just proportions. The Kârlê and Nâsik monasteries belong to the epic age—the art of the Mahâbhârata and Râmâyana; the Ajantâ monasteries and chaitya-houses, from the fourth to the seventh centuries, belong to the later Indian classics—the age of Sakûntala.
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FIG. 50.—Plan of Monastic Hall No. I, Ajantâ (from Fergusson and Burgess’s “Cave Temples”).
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The symbolism is the same as at Kârlê and at Nâsik. The Silpa-sâstras will help us to understand the ideas conveyed by the Ajantâ variety of the Vishnu pillar. Instead of Lakshmî’s jar of plenty, the bases of the pillars are square—*Brahmâ-kantha*. Higher up they change into an octagonal section—*Vishnu-kantha*. Still higher the shaft becomes circular or sixteen-sided, with flutings: the technical name for this is *Rudra-kantha*. So the whole shaft symbolises the Three Aspects of the One.
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The capital consists of the traditional amalaka, the water-lily fruit (Fergusson’s “pudding”). This, as at Kârlê, supports a Vedic altar with four legs, only the succession of thin slabs is reduced to a plain square abacus, and the legs which enclose the amalaka are carved with the greatest skill into little fat men—Indian trolls—or *pisâchas*. Ushas, the Dawn-maiden, Indra, and other Vedic deities are no longer seated on the altar. Their place is taken by images of the Buddha, attended by Devas, carved upon the massive bracket capital.
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In Hînayâna architecture one would find the Vedic rail used to decorate the architrave above the pillars. Here it is replaced by a sculptured frieze showing incidents in the life of the Buddha or stories from the Jâtakas. Above this frieze is the chhaja, ornamented as usual with miniature sun-windows. In each of the windows a head appears. We have seen before, in the Bharhut sculptures (Pl. III, A), representations of men or Devas peeping out of sun-windows. Who can this be? That is a question which Buddhist pilgrims, accustomed to the plain sun-windows of Hînayâna symbolism, might well have asked as they gazed upwards, after following with eager eyes the story of the Master’s life on the sculptured frieze. On a Vishnu or Siva shrine the devout would know at once that within a sun-window the image must be either Brahmâ or Siva, the rising or setting sun. “What do our gurus mean by this?” the pilgrims would ask. “It is Avalokiteshvara,” the monks would answer—“the Lord who looks down from Heaven upon us; not the Tathâgata Himself, but a Bodhisattva, a Buddha in being.”¹
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¹ I had identified Avalokiteshvara with Brahmâ by this process of reasoning before I noticed that Colonel Waddell had arrived at the same conclusion by a comparison of the attributes of Brahmanical and Buddhist images. M. Foucher’s objections (“Étude sur l’iconographie Bouddhique,” p. 173 n.) can, I think, be easily met. Avalokiteshvara has a sâttvic as well as a tâmasic aspect, according as he is related to the rising or the setting sun. In the former case (as in Nepal) his image is red; in the latter white. The eleven-headed Avalokiteshvara is derived from the five-headed Brahmâ or Siva symbol, representing the five cosmic elements.
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PRINCE SIDDHARTHA, FRESCO PAINTING, AJANTÂ
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DEVAS AND ATTENDANTS, FRESCO PAINTING, AJANTÂ
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Thus Mahâyâna Buddhism transformed into Bodhisattvas, to be worshipped by the faithful as Buddhas that are to be, the Devas who watched the Hînayâna service at Kârlê and Nâsik, and at the older chaitya-houses of Ajantâ, just as they had watched the Vedic sacrifices of old. The bright nature-spirits of the Vedas remained for ever impressed upon the Indian mind; transformed into concepts of philosophy, they became the gods of Brahman theology and Bodhisattvas of the Buddhists.
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Above the chhaja is another sculptured frieze occupied mostly by scenes in the Buddhist heavens, and panels in which the sacred goose (*hamsa*), a symbol of the parting soul, is used as a decorative motif. On a narrow band above it, supported by heads which seem to be those of the bats which infest the caves, is a small Vedic rail transformed into a chequer pattern.
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The inside of the verandah of the second monastic hall with the remains of its fine painted ceiling is shown in Pl. XLII. The next plate gives a fine impression of the stately magnificence of the interior. The pillars which support the roof are similar to those of the verandah, only the proportions are more massive. It is somewhat smaller than the first hall, being only 48 feet square instead of 64 feet, the dimensions of the former, but the arrangements are similar. The sanctuary with an image of Buddha is on the side facing the entrance, with a smaller cell for another image on either side of it. The scholars' or neophytes' cells, ten in number, are placed along the two sides of the hall at right angles to the shrine. Two larger cells at each end of the verandah provided accommodation for the Abbot and his deputy. The arrangements of the first monastic hall (fig. 50) are nearly the same, but on a somewhat more ample scale.
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The chief glory of Ajantâ is in the frescoes, which are now nearly all that remain of the greatest pictorial art of India, but barbarously mutilated and ruined both from lack of care and by inept attempts at conservation. Very rarely in the world’s history has there come together that true symphony of the three arts—painting, sculpture, and architectonic design—creating the most perfect architecture, which are so beautifully harmonised at Ajantâ. By a fortuitous circumstance a large fragment of one of the finest frescoes, and one of the greatest masterpieces of any age, in the first monastic hall, is one of the best preserved.
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It is painted on the wall to the left of the principal shrine. The central figure is of a youth crowned with a royal tiara and holding Vishnu’s blue water-lily in his right hand. A water-lily is also fastened on either side of the tiara, and the long black curls falling over his shoulders are garlanded with jessamine. He is looking downwards in a pensive mood, as if filled with the presentiment of coming
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FAÇADE OF CHAITYA-HOUSE XIX, AJANṮÂ
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FAÇADE OF CHAITYA-HOUSE XXVI, AJANTÂ
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the mind of an Indian painter. The noble head of Prince Siddhartha finds an exact parallel in another wonderful masterpiece of Indian art, the Vishnu Aspect or central head of the Trimûrti¹ at Elephanta (Pl. LVI). The tiaras (*mukutas*) in both are identical in design, and the head, both in the fresco painting and the sculpture, evidently belong to the same traditional type, though the more youthful Christ-like face of Prince Siddhartha fitly expresses the distinction between the two conceptions.
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¹ This has always been mistaken for Brahmâ. Dr. Coomaraswamy, in his "Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon" (Pl. 33), gives the head of Parvati as that of Vishnu.
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FIG. 51.—Siva and Parvati. Painting in Cave I (from a copy by Mr. Nanda Lal Bose).
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Another superb fragment of painting (Pl. XLV) appears to be also a Vishnu motif. This is painted on the walls of the verandah in the monastic hall No. XVII, which has a north-west aspect; but here it is not the principal subject of the picture, as in the other hall, which is open to the rising sun. This is Vishnu as a Bodhisattva,² accompanied by Lakshmî, as Târâ, flying down from heaven to attend some event in the life of the Buddha. The animation of the heavenly beings, expressed by this Indian Tintoretto with an amazing display of technical power, is a great contrast to the serene composure, tinged with sadness, so masterfully rendered by the forgotten Perugino of Ajantâ in the first monastic hall. Only the dullest artistic comprehension will refuse to place these Ajantâ frescoes in the same category as the greatest masterpieces of Italian art. That they have been so long unappreciated by European artists is due in great measure to the miserably inadequate reproductions of them by which they have been hitherto known. The uninspired copies made by the Bombay School of Art, where the minds of Indian students are still drugged with the dull academic formularies of Europe, give no indication of the technical power and transcendent genius of the Ajantâ painters. But for the fact that since these copies were made many of the original frescoes have been shamefully destroyed or ruined by neglect, their destruction by fire would have been no loss to art.
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² The Buddhist adaptation of Vishnu as the deification of the Sangha seems to have been the Bodhisattva Visvapâni, whose other name was Akâsa-garbha, the Container of Akâsa (ether)—this being also an attribute of Vishnu as the power which maintained the equilibrium of the cosmos.
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Apart from their artistic value the Ajantâ frescoes have an extraordinary historical interest for the light they throw upon the evolution of Mahâyâna Buddhism ; but the full elucidation of them must be left until the publication in "Ars Asiatica" of the results of the complete photographic survey of the paintings with which M. Victor Goloubeff has followed up the devoted labours of Mrs. Herringham and her Indian collaborators.
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Of the many chaitya-houses which were the chapels of the University of Ajantâ the two which represent the great epoch of Indian architecture from the fifth to the ninth centuries are those numbered XIX and XXVI.
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The latter is the largest and finest in design, for the figuresculpture on the façade of XIX (Pl. XLVI), though fine as craftsmanship, is not happily conceived architecturally. It is very likely, as Sister Nivedita has suggested,¹ that these sculptures were the work of Gandharan craftsmen, driven to find a shelter in the cloisters of Ajantâ when the Buddhist monasteries of North-west India were ravaged and burnt by the tyrant Mihiragula in the middle of the sixth century. It is quite possible, indeed, that this front is a sculptured palimpsest, executed by two different generations of craftsmen; for it is unusual to find in this great epoch the clumsy spacing of decoration, contrasting so curiously with the fine design of the architectural detail. But it would be easily explained by assuming that some of the colossal figures were sculptured on the original façade long after the chaitya-house was finished.
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¹ "Footfalls of Indian History," p. 52.
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PILLARS AND TRIFORIUM, CHAITYA-HOUSE XXVI, AJANṬĀ
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The entrances to a house, temple, or shrine are always in India consecrated places, only second in importance to the sacred image itself; it is therefore here that the highest art of the master-craftsman is shown. Volumes might be filled with examples of Indian doorways of the classic age which reveal the fountain-head of the inspiration of Chârtres, Rheims, and Bourges. Ajantâ has some of them, but other parts of India can show more perfect door-sculpture. Plates L and LI are superb examples from Vishnu temples in Central India, probably contemporary with the latest period of Ajantâ. There one can see that Gothic art of India which in the three centuries of its zenith in India (A.D. 400–700) was the parent tree from which all its Eastern and Western grafts were taken.
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FIG. 52.—Plan of Chaitya-house XXVI, Ajantâ (from Fergusson's "Cave Temples").
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Fig. 52 shows the plan of the chaitya-house. The dimensions of it are nearly 68 feet in length, 36 feet in breadth, and the height of the nave to the centre of the roof 31 feet. It is therefore little more than half of the Kârlê chaitya-house; it is a university chapel, and not a cathedral, like the latter. The difference between the chaitya as at Kârlê and Ajantâ shows how Indian Buddhism of the second or third century B.C. differed from that of the seventh or eighth century A.D. At Kârlê the chaitya is a reliquary and a symbol. At Ajantâ it is a shrine for the sacred image which, lighted up by the golden rays of the setting sun through the grand sun-window of the nave, was adored as a mystic vision of the Messiah (Maitreya) who is yet to come. The pillars of the Sangha which divide the nave from the aisles are of the same type as those already described in the first college hall facing the chaitya-house on the opposite bend of the torrent. The symbolism remains the same as at Kârlê. On the architrave, or triforium, above the capitals there is a richly sculptured frieze (Pl. XLIX), and images of the Buddha are placed in exquisite shrines along the walls of the side aisles where the scholars worshipped. All the sculpture at Ajantâ was finished with a fine coat of polished clumam, of the thickness of an egg-shell, which served as a ground for discreet touches of colour; but very little of this now remains.
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CARVED TEMPLE DOORWAY, DHAMTARI, CENTRAL PROVINCES
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Some of the latest sculpture at Ajantâ is evidently done by ivory carvers, or goldsmiths, and Cellini's chisel never surpassed the beauty and finish of the bracket capitals from some of the college halls shown in Plate LII. In the lower figure of the plate the amalaka of the capital is converted into Lakshmî's jar of plenty—a favourite device in Indian medieval architecture—the legs of the Vedic altar being converted into floral devices growing out of this cornucopia.
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Having thus briefly described the principal architectural details of this wonderful university of ancient India and stated its chronology according to the scientific method, I will attempt to sum up its history from the Indian point of view. Let us try to see it as the Indian artists who created Ajantâ saw and felt it. The Western scientific method ignores the Indian way of thinking and does nothing to light up the obscurity of Indian history: it tells the facts, but leaves Ajantâ to the bats and owls.
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Ajantâ is a microcosm of ancient and medieval Indian history, but Indian historians would divide it into three epochs instead of four. The first was the sâttvic cycle; the age of quiet meditation, beginning with the time of the Saint Asoka, whose peaceful edicts proclaimed the Blessed One's message of peace and love throughout the land of Bharata-varsha. Then some pious members of the Sangha carved out of this digit of the moon—Siva’s crest—the middle section (Pl. XL) facing north, the region of the moonlit sky, and taught the Buddha’s doctrines with the simple austere ritual of the Hînayâna school.
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The second was the râjasic cycle—the age of passion, action, and energy—when the hero Vikramâditya ruled the land with justice and wisdom, drove back the Hun invaders, and recovered Lakshmî’s jar of plenty by the churning of the Ocean of Time. It was then that the college halls were carved on the western tip of Siva’s crest, and there the scholars worshipped God in His râjasic Aspect, taking as His symbols the dawn and the rising sun.
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Then, when dark clouds began to gather over Bharata-varsha, when the black plague was raging, and savage hordes of barbarians poured down the Indus valley in the darkest days of the Kali age,¹ began the tâmasic aspect of Ajantâ’s life. It is then that the divine powers of destruction, death, and re-birth should be worshipped in fear, but with hope and faith. That was the time when the eastern tip of Siva’s crest became the lodging-place of the scholars of Ajantâ; there, in those splendid chaitya-houses, they worshipped the Lord who looks down with infinite love upon His children, even when His work of destruction is going on. He knows there is no death!
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¹ Indian chronologists divide the life of the universe into four ages, the Krita, Trêtâ, Dwâpara, and Kali. The commencement of the latter is reckoned at 3102 B.C., and towards the end of it the last incarnation of Vishnu, Kalkin, will appear to restore peace and righteousness on earth.
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And so, at last, the sun of Ajantâ set. The long-expected Messiah did not come. The exact time the sacred spot hallowed by associations of a thousand years was deserted is
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CARVED TEMPLE DOORWAY, SIRPUR, CENTRAL PROVINCES
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CARVED BRACKET CAPITALS, AJANTÂ
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not known—probably about the tenth century, when the sword of Islam descended to complete the havoc which the Hun barbarians had begun. For centuries the college halls and chapels have been the haunt of venomous snakes and of the wild beasts of the neighbouring jungle; myriads of bats have fouled them, and vast swarms of bees have blackened their lovely painted ceilings
Linked texts (8)
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
- Takṣaśilā
- Nālandā
- Bharhut
- Nāsik
- Nasik Caves
- Ajanta