A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c14.s3.2

c14.s3.2

The principal group of caves contains eight excavations, the largest being 94 feet square. The whole of the roof, walls, and columns of this great chamber was coated with fine stucco and decorated with paintings of high merit and infinite variety. Smaller remnants of painting may be still discerned in two other caves, and there is reason to believe that the work is not all of one period. Major Luard, the latest authority on the subject, thinks it possible that ‘a specially deputed draughtsman might still, by constantly wetting the frescoes, copy some portion of the designs, which each rainy season is making more and more indistinct’.