The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c17.10

c17.10

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