Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/95

Rh painting and gilding. All the pillars were similarly finished.

The imagination must fill in what is now wanting in this noble deserted Assembly-hall of the Sangha—the painted banners hung across the nave; the flickering light from the lamps reflected upon the glittering surface of the stūpa, and losing itself in the vaulted roof above; the bowed figures of the yellow-robed monks, solemnly pacing round the relic-shrine and chanting the sacred texts, or seated on the floor in meditation or grave debate; the pious laymen looking on from between the close-set pillars of the nave, and following the sacramental path along the outer ambulatory.

In the ancient but long deserted Buddhist university of Ajantā, carved in the ravine of the Wāghorā torrent in the upper basin of the Tāptī river, and now in the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad, there is a great series of stūpa-houses and monasteries dating from about the second and first centuries (Nos. IX and X) to the seventh century  or later (No. XXVI). The site chosen is a lofty scarp of rock in a secluded glen, crescent-shaped and overlooking a mountain torrent which pours over the high rocks at the northern end of the ravine in a great cascade. Truly a fit place for meditation, and one which every Indian poet would associate with the birth of the holy Ganges in the wilds of Himālaya. We might be sure that the Buddhist bhikkus were not the first to fix their ashrams here. The history of Buddhist art for nine hundred years is told in the twenty-six chapels and college halls ranged along the cliff. First the choice of the crescent-shaped site shows the association of early Buddhism with the ancient Vedic Chandra worship. Next the strict asceticism of the primitive