The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c17.55

c17.55

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.