SAST Wingees

Ajanta Ellora # 3 & 4

The third day we went on the Aurangabad city tour. Our first stop was at the Daulatabad Fort. Originally founded by the Yadavas as Deogiri later became Daulatabad during the Mughal regime.

The fort is in ruins, but the fascinating thing about is the fact that it is a fort that has never been penetrated and captured in battle. The only way to capture this fort was to lay siege to it and starve its inhabitants.

It has 7 or 8 layers of defence built into it. At first, the invaders are confronted with crossing a series of huge iron-clad doors with built-in spikes to defend an attack of elephants.

Once the invaders cross these barricades, they reach the part of the fort that is covered by a moat and there was a bridge made of leather across the moat (now the bridge has been converted to a wooden one). When the invaders reach the middle part of the bridge, the bridge itself was thrown down, making the invaders fall into the moat teeming with killer crocodiles.

If the invaders cross this, they are led into a dark alley – at the end of the dark alley is a pathway seeming to lead into the main part of the fort, but actually leads the invaders into a free fall into the moat. If they escape that and proceed further, they reach an area with an opening above them through which hot oil is poured on the invaders.

If they escape that, they then are led into the real entrance to the main part of the fort, but now the defenders have erected a wall of fire which repels the invaders back into the alley with the opening above. I am sure you know why this fort is impenetrable now.

After that, we went to the Aurangabad caves – legend has it that after finishing their work at Ajanta caves in the 7th century A.D., the cave artists went to work at the Aurangabad caves. But soon they found that the rock was not to their liking and they abandoned these caves and moved to the Ellora Caves. But before they abandoned the Aurangabad caves, they had carved 13 caves. We managed to see caves #7, 8 and 9. Caves #1-6 were a bit afar and our guide said it was risky to go see them due to the wet conditions.

If you follow Buddhist history, around the later part of 7th Century A.D. Mahayana Buddhism had taken over completely. Additionally it had started becoming elitist as well by borrowing some ideas from Hinduism like switching to Sanskrit as the key language in place of Pali/Prakrit they were using earlier.

The influence of Hinduism must have reached record levels – we found a cave with Lord Ganesha and Buddha on the same pedestal. I have included a picture of this in my trip album that I have uploaded.

After that, we visited “Bibi Ka Maqbara” – sometimes called the poor man’s Taj Mahal. Its a mausoluem dedicated to Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb’s wife (“bibi”). It resembles the Taj Mahal in many ways in look and feel. However, they did not spend as much money, so only the facades are made of marble and the semi-precious stones that are there in the Taj Mahal are not there here.
Overall, we felt that like every other tourist spot, it was under-leveraged. Given some focus, this could be turned into a nice tourist spot. We then moved to the Panchakki “Water Mill” – this is a mill that is operated by the gravitational flow of water brought from a 5 km distance via a dedicated canal. This force of the water operates a mill that is used to grind cereals, grains into flour. A muslim saint ran this place and the funds from the operations was used to finance the religious activities.

After that we spent some time at a saree weaving center where the famous paithani and himroo style saris were being made and sold. Paithani style is over 2000 years old. That completed our city tour as well as the Ajanta Ellora tour itself.

Now we had one more day to spend, which we had reserved for contingency purposes in case it rained. Since it did not rain at all, we were able to finish the tour in 3 days.

The 4th day, we went back to the Ajanta Caves – we were so enamored by the paintings. Also our fear that next time we come here the paintings may be completely gone drove us to visit the Ajanta caves again. This time, we spent a lot more time looking at the paintings and were able to decipher a few more Jatakas thanks to the guide book we were carrying.

Overall, the tour was memorable and a dream come true. If you are making the trip avoid the travel agent Travelguru which put us in a dump called Benzy Palace in Mumbai and Hotel Classic in Aurangabad for a variety of reasons.

Ajanta Ellora Moblog #1

Updated Sep 3, 2006: I added some pictures from my trip. Captions cover the key items i have described below. Also updated some details below.

Decided to use the Independence Day weekend to go see the famed Ajanta Ellora caves in Maharashtra – this is the first major tour we are undertaking after coming back to India. We took off last night to Mumbai. Thanks to the terror news from London, the security was very tight. We had to check-in everything. We did make it to Mumbai at 12 midnight 2 hours behind schedule. Our travel agent had booked us into a Hotel Benzy Palace in Andheri.

When I booked it I was told that it was a 3 star deluxe hotel. It turned out to be a very very bad hotel. Even the sheets weren’t clean. The only thing deluxe about it was the sign on the hotel’s door. We managed to sleep for a couple hours and got up at 5am to catch the flight to Aurangabad. Airport security was tight again, but the flight took off on time. Being the rainy season, we were very anxious about rains spoiling the trip. Fortunately, when we landed in Aurangabad, the sun was shining bright and our travel company’s car was waiting. We reached our hotel – another supposed 3 star hotel. After Benzy Palace anything would be better. But this one was decent, although not quite 3 star. We had a quick breakfast and met our local english-speaking guide at 11am.

He suggested that we don’t do the city tour as planned but see the Ellora today taking advantage of the sunny day. It was a great decision. We reached Ellora at 12 noon with the sun still shining bright. There was lush greenery, waterfalls and the caves laid out in front of us like a picture post card. Ellora caves are dated to have started in 6th century AD and went on till 12th century AD. Ellora is a twist on the name of a local village called Ellur.

The main dynasties that funded the Ellora was the Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas. There were a few others as well, but these were the main patrons. The Ellora caves consist of 34 caves – 1-13 are Buddhist, 14-29 are Hindu and 30-34 are Jain. All the caves are cut into the face of the cliff except one which we will cover later.

All of them were cut with using nothing other than basic tools like pick axes, chisels and hammers. The rocks are basalt (igneous rock) which is slightly easier to carve than granite but quite a bit tougher than sandstone. So you can imagine the sheer human effort that went into this.

Our tour started at Cave #1. The buddhist caves are from the Mahayana school of buddhism (the other one being the hinayana school of buddhism). The first few Buddhist caves were Viharas (monasteries) with long pillared halls. Buddha adorning the inner sanctum in his famous poses. 2 Bodhisattvas guarding the door – one is Padmapani (lotus bearer) and the other is Vajrapani (thunderbolt bearer). Although nothing spectacular so far, we could start to sense the magnitude of the effort. So far the scenes were pretty repetitive with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in the niches and sanctums.

When we reached Cave #10 – our guide mentioned that this is locally known as the Carpenter’s hut (sutar ki zopadi) for its stonework imitating woodwork. Its also called Viswakarma’s hut. Nothing could have prepared us for the sight we saw in here. I got goosebumps. It is a beautiful cathedral (chaitya) with the Buddha sitting in the center with a remarkably serene face – an elaborately carved backdrop (stupa). As we looked up we could see the roof shaped in the form of a inverted semi circle. The entire roof was punctuated with beams carved every few inches as a series of semi circles. All this resembling curved wooden beams that you typically see. Our guide reminded us again that this is monolithic as well. Entire chaitya carved out of a single rock. Wow!

Then we looked at caves 11-14 were the dormintories for young monks. 2 of the dormitories were 3 storeyed, probably to accomodate a larger number of people. At the top storey (cave #13) we saw a grand hall again with Buddhas and Boddhisattvas. There were 2 important arrangements of Buddha statues pointed out by our guide. Each arrangement had 7 buddhas each – the first one representing the earthly Buddhas and the second one representing the heavenly Buddhas (note to self – need to look up the religious meaning of this). We also saw a few statues of Maha Mayuri (buddhist goddess of learning – equivalent of the Hindu Goddess Saraswati). Then we moved to the Hindu cave #15.

Point to note that although Vishnu appears in a few places, the sculptures are entirely dominated by Shiva and related deities. Now onto what many consider THE most important in all of Ellora – cave #16. This is the famous Kailash temple dedicated to Shiva. This one pounds to dust any ideas you may have had about the sizes of these caves. Gives new meaning to the word monumental. The entire edifice was carved out of a single rock – considered to be the world’s largest monolithic structure. Kailash temple was created by removing, get this, 200,000 tons of rock to create a magnigficent temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. Our guide mentioned that the temple was inspired by the Virupaksha temple in Karnataka and Kailasanadhar Temple in Kancheepuram, Tamilnadu.

It took 15 150 years to make this temple employing artisans spanning seven generations. The entire temple is said to resemble a chariot. Interestingly, instead of wheels, the artists have carved hundreds of elephants and lions in the lower part of the temple to make it appear as if the temple is held aloft by these animals. The temple has 2 ornate flagstaff pillars (dwajasthamb) instead of the usual one flagstaff and 2 large elephants standing guard. On either side of the main structure, ramayana and mahabharata are carved. Sadly, the temple was never consecrated probably because it was never fully completed.

Behind the main structure there is an enormous cantilevered structure carved in rock – its supposedly an engineering marvel. There are also statues for ganga, jamuna and saraswati – the 3 major rivers. The one major recurring theme in the Hindu caves is the story of Ravana getting under Kailash and shaking it with Parvati (Shiva’s wife) running into Shiva’s arms in fear. There are a few others like Shiva and Parvati playing a game of dice that keep repeating.

Another interesting sculpture we came across in the rest of the Hindu caves is the one with the 7 divine mothers (saptamatha) flanked on one side by Skanda and Ganesh on the other with an unusual twin sculptures called Kala and Kali. Kala and Kali are carved in a form resembling a skeleton. Another unusual one was Bhringi imitating Shiva’s dance also represented in skeletal form.

As we moved from cave to cave, the typical ones like Kali killing Mahishasura (buffalo demon), Shiva killing various demons kept appearing. Finally, we moved to the Jain caves. Experts consider the Jain caves to be the most intricately carved in Ellora. In all the caves, Mahavira is in the sanctum flanked by Mathanga on a elephant and Siddhayika on a lion (goddess of wealth). There were also statues of Parsvanath ( the 23rd thirthankara, Mahavira being the 24th). Our guide pointed out the differences between Mahavira statues and Buddha statues.

To the untrained eye both look almost identical – Buddha is usually in the Padmasana (a yoga pose) and Mahavira is usually in the Ardha Padmasana. Buddha wears some clothes and Mahavira does not. Mahavira has 3 umbrellas over his head and Buddha does not. The Jain caves are from the Digambara school ( the other one being Swetambara). It was around 4pm and we completed the tour and came back to the hotel, took a small walk around, had dinner and went to bed.

More to come.

Ajanta Ellora Moblog #2

Updated Sep 3, 2006: I added some pictures from the trip. Covers some of the scenes i have described below. Also updated some details below.

Per our guide’s recommendation, we left the hotel at 8.15 am and reached the Ajanta caves at 10.30 am. Thanks to the rain god, we had another great sunny day today. You have to park your car a couple of kilometers away from the caves and take a shuttle bus. This is a good thing done by the government to protect the monument from auto emissions. As you alight from the bus, you get a view of the caves arranged in horseshoe shape (people call it semicircular here). Below you can see the Waghora river flowing. Ajanta is named after a nearby village Achintya.

Ajanta caves date back from 2nd century B.C. to 7th century A.D and is entirely Buddhist (both Hinayana and Mahayana schools). Ajanta caves were lost to the world for over 1000 years untill they were rediscovered by a british military person John Smith in the year 1819. He stumbled upon cave no. 10 on one of his hunting trips.

The tour started in Cave No.1 considered to be amongst the well-preserved ones. You have to take off  your shoes and no flash photography allowed to prevent damage to the paintings.

Many paintings are damaged but with a bit of imagination you can visualize how splendorous it must have looked. Cave no.1 is dated to 7th century A.D and is a Vihara (monastery). This is the most important cave for paintings.

As always at the far end you have the Buddha in his characteristic sitting pose, the hall has several pillars and the walls and the ceiling are covered by paintings. If you are familiar with the renaissance frescoes in Italy, they were painted on a plastered wall when the plaster is still wet.

Some people mistakenly think that the Ajanta paintings are frescoes. But they are not. They used a technique called tempera. The cave wall was first covered by 2 layers of a plaster made of mud, paddy husk, mineral dust and a few other materials. Then after drying that they apply a thin layer of lime and let that dry. After that they paint using mineral colors mixed with glue. They used 6 colors including Lapis Lazuli. Lapis Lazuli giving the characteristic blue color (also seen in the renaissance paintings especially in the Sistine Chapel).

The lapis lazuli alone was imported and hence was used sparingly. The first paintings our guide showed us was Padmapani and Vajrapani. These 2 paintings adorn the cover pages of history books and the most likely picture adorning the cover of any book covering Ajanta caves. Spectacular paintings capturing the beautiful human form in various colors and amazing detail.

Then we saw various famous ones like the flying couple, scenes from the palace, bathing scene, maha janaka jataka tale, assault of mara, miracle of shravasti, conversion of nanda. Conversion of Nanda is fairly well preserved. Nanda is a cousin of the Buddha and he listens to Buddha’s teachings and gets converted. His wife becomes dejected etc. In one of the paintings you see a 3D perspective in a 2D painting. The painting shows a portico with a depth perspective by shortening the pillars in the far end.

Interestingly, this predates the renaissance painting by Gotto Giotto which first created the 3D effect in 2D painting first time in Europe some 600 years later. (Please see my Italy moblog post for details on that on my post about the Uffizi Gallery where this painting is featured).

Buddha used the Jataka tales (for those not familiar, these are the stories with animal characters like the Aesop’s fables and almost always convey a moral). So many of the paintings are stories from the Jataka tales. You also see the famous 4 deers with one head sculpture here called the quadripartite deer. Next we go to Cave no.2. Its quite similar to Cave no.1. Here we saw the Kapi Jataka and Chaddantha Jataka, Vidurapandita Jataka, Irandati on a swing etc. There is one paiting in the far right wall of the cave which is amazing.

The painting is of a princess wearing a lot of jewels including a long necklace. So far it looked any other painting in there. Then our guide asked one of the officials manning the cave to take a torch and shine it on the necklace. Something amazing happened, one could see the necklace now shining with precious stones and looking as if it is protruding from the painting as if done in 3D. The painting per se is 2D and this is an illusion. Wow!
Cave 3 is another monastery.

It had to be abandoned because the roof caved in after they started. In fact you can see markings that seem to indicate their attempts to make the ceiling higher to where the roof had fallen in. But another part of the roof fell in. So the cave had been abandoned.

Next we moved to Cave no.4 another unfinished monastery type cave. The stand out feature are the 6 standing buddhas adornning the antechamber of the sanctum sanctorum. 2 of the 6 Buddhas are unfinished.

Cave 5 next, also a monastery type, is at a lower level, remains unfinished as well. Cave 6 is a 2 storeyed monastery type. Key features are the 16 cells, the miracle of sharavasti in painted form – Buddha appears as 1000 buddhas to convince some doubting heretics at a place called shravasti, hence its name.

Cave no.7 another monsatery type. Standout feature being the miracle of shravasti in sculpture form on both the walls of the antechamber.

Cave no. 9 is the first you see of the Chaitya type dated to 1st century BC, the 2nd oldest in Ajanta. The facade bears the characteristic Ajanta feature called the Chaitya window which is a semicircular or horseshoe shaped stone window. The facade has Buddha statues later added by the Mahayanas (Hinayanas don’t believe in idol worship). Once inside you can see the stupa in the form of a globule on a high cylindrical base. Again in the Hinayana tradition there is no Buddha statue in the stupa. The semicircular roof had wooden beams for decoration purposes which have since fallen off.

The entire chaitya is similar to the jaw-dropping cave no.10 in Ellora that we saw yesterday. Next we move to Cave 10, the crown jewel of the Ajanta. Its almost in the centre of the horseshoe and is dated to 2nd century BC. On the facade of the Chaitya you can see a Pali (the then spoken language) inscription in Brahmi script recording the gift of a Shatavahana king Vasishtiputra Katahadi. The fact that we were standing before 2200 year old structure inspired a strange awe in us.

This Chaitya design is the same as Cave no.9. But here you see Buddha’s statue in the stupa in the centre in Mahayana tradition (must have been added later). On the pillar on the right near the stupa you can see graffiti written by John Smith announcing his discovery with his name and date 1819. On the walls on either side you can see the original paintings behind glass entirely covered with graffiti by Indian people. Its a shame that we have lost this priceless treasure to graffiti.

Cave no.11 unfinished vihara (monastery)style one. Cave no.12 is another vihara (monastery) type. Distinctive feature is the cells with 2 stone beds in each cell.

Cave 15 houses the offices of the Archaeological Survey of India. Cave no. 16 has 2 elephants on either side of the doorway. As you enter you can see the sculpture of a naga king seated. In the sanctum you see the Buddha sitting in the pralampada pose (he sits like one would on a chair with feet dangling). In this cave there are quite a few well-preserved paintings. On the right wall you can see the famous painting where Sujatha offers kheer to Buddha. This scene is from the pre-enlightenment life of the Buddha. You see some more Jataka paintings like the Hasthi Jataka.

Cave no.17 is another monastery style one. On the entrance to this cave we could see the painted version of the eight earthly buddhas (not seven as I mentioned yesterday). The eighth buddha Maitreya is yet to be born. The buddha that we know is supposedly the seventh one. Inside we saw the Maha Kapi jataka. Sculptures of musicians on the pillars.

Cave no. 24 is unfinished but it gives the best example of how the monolithic rock cut architecture was done. You can see the ceiling, pillars, cells etc unfinished.

Cave 26 has the Buddha reclining on a couch – a splendid statue on the left wall. After that on the same wall you see a sculpted version of the famous Assault of the Mara – the legend in which Mara tries to disturb Buddha’s penance using a variety of techniques like sending in the army, sending his seven beautiful daughters to seduce the Buddha etc. None of which worked, of course. On the first pillar on the right side, we saw an interesting painting of a child which seems to be rushing towards you regardless which side you look from.

Cave no. 28 and 29 are inaccessible.

With that our tour ended around 1.30pm. Seeing the Ajanta has been a life-long dream for both Priya Raju and I ever since we read about the Ajanta in the history texts.

Ajanta and Ellora should be on the list of every tourist interested in culture.

We in India should learn how to package and market this amazing monument from the Peruvians and Italians who have masterfully packaged their country’s cultural contributions to the world. More to come.

Blogswara

A group of Indians have come together to create music using Internet as the medium for collaboration. Some of these talented folks involved in Blogswara have their own audio (music) blog as well. Make sure to visit them as well. I have always been self-conscious about my own lack of talent in any area that is even remotely considered to be an art – such as music (particularly singing), painting etc. This site only exacerbated those feelings. I am not the least bit jealous, but I wish that god had sprinkled in me at least a bit of innate talent in any one of the above areas – for example, maybe just enough to carry a tune . Ganesh

New look for the blog coming

First, an update. Thanks to a viral infection i seem to have caught on our Ajanta/Ellora trip, i have been out of action for the past 10 days. Due to that i haven’t been able to write posts. Fall season has started and as is a tradition on this blog, we will be changing the skin of this blog over the coming weekend.