A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c21.41

c21.41

The two vihāras (Nos. 16 and 17) made under the Vākāṭakas (about A.D. 500) are pillared halls (with the usual cells and shrines in the back walls) containing Buddhas seated in ‘European fashion’ (pralamba pāda). In the paintings of No. 16, there is a remarkable combination of figures with architectural motifs, while a striking narrative style marks the scenes of the life of the Buddha depicted in No. 17. No. 19 (Pl. III), with its highly embellished façade and its numerous Buddhas, marking a great development of Mahāyāna sculpture, may be dated about 550, thus forming a link between the earlier group and that of the seventh century. The pillars within this *caitya* are fluted columns richly ornamented. The capitals are of the pot and foliage variety. The chief painting here is the ‘Return to Kapilavastu’. Nos. 1-5 and 21-6 were the last group to come into existence (c. 600-50). No. 1 contains the painting of the beautiful ‘Bodhisattva with blue lotus’ and other famous frescoes including the ‘Śibi-Jātaka’ and ‘Banquet of Persians’, really a representation of the Buddhist god Pañcika. The painters of Ajanta ‘had a complete command of posture. Their knowledge of the types and positions, gestures and beauties of hands is amazing. Many racial types are rendered; the features are often elaborately studied and of high-breeding, and one might call it stylistic-breeding. In some pictures considerable impetus of movement of different kinds is well suggested. Some of the schemes of colour composition are most remarkable and interesting and there is great variety.’ A critic observes: ‘It is impossible for anyone who has not seen them with their own eyes to realize how great and solid the paintings in the caves are; how wonderful in their simplicity and religious fervour.’ But the simplicity was the result of a very conscious art-tradition of long standing and, as Grousset has said, ‘every one of the chief subjects of the Ajanta frescoes is worthy of separate analysis’. The Ajanta style of painting is seen contemporaneously at Sigiriya in Ceylon and some centuries later in the paintings of a Jaina cave at Sittannavāśal (Pudukkoṭṭai), in the cave-temple at Tirumalaipuram (Tinnevelly district), and on the inner walls of the *garbhagriha* of the Great Temple at Tanjore.