Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.24

v3.c12.24

Cave XI, although situated between Caves X and XII, from the point of view of both architecture and painting is of a much later date than either of the latter two caves.³ Fergusson has included it in the group of earliest caves at Ajanta, but its façade, its pillars, its plan of the main hall and the shrine, and its main doorway and windows place it unmistakably among the latest caves at Ajanta, which belong to the latter part of the sixth century A.D. The cave is approached by a stair, and the high plinth is decorated in the form of a balustrade, which does not have curvilinear posts and rails in the style of earlier caves, but plain flat columns and horizontal bars such as we notice in the parapets of structural temples of the medieval period (Plate XXXVIII).