A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c14.s2.1

c14.s2.1

The story of the art of painting in India is continued by the celebrated frescoes of the Ajaṇṭā caves in the west, ranging in date from about A.D. 50, or earlier, to 642, a period of some six or seven centuries, and constituting the most important mass of ancient painting extant in the world, Pompeii only excepted. The caves, twenty-nine in number, are 'excavated in the face of an almost perpendicular scarp of rock about 250 feet high, sweeping round in a curve of fully a semicircle, and forming the north or outer side of a wild and lonely glen, down which comes a small stream'. This glen or ravine, a scene of great natural beauty and perfect seclusion, admirably adapted for a monastic retreat, is situated about three and a half miles south-west from Fardāpur, a small town in the Nizam's Dominions, standing at the foot of a pass across the Indhyādri Hills, which divide the table-land of the Deccan from the Khāndesh District in the Tāpti valley, and four miles WNW. from the town of Ajaṇṭā (30° 32' N., 75° 46' E.), not far from the battle-field of Assaye.²