Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/109

THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 8i great teacher became all-important. For organised worship the chaitya halls always sufficed. The image in its shrine doubtless received a certain ritualised attention morning and evening — above all, incense was burnt before it — but its main purpose was to keep the students in mind of the great Guru, the divine teacher and ideal, in whose invisible presence every act was to be performed. It is this academic aspect of the life at Ajanta which speaks in the long rows of viharas dug out within single epochs. The numbers Four to One cannot be far removed from number Seventeen, and this fact can only be accounted for in this way. Of the learning that was imparted in these monastic colleges we read in Hiouen Tsang. From the beginning the texts must have been recited constantly in the abbey-halls. But that secular learning also was sometjmes cultivated we are expressly told in the case of Nalanda, where arithmetic and astronomy were studied, and standard time was kept for the kingdom of Magadha by means of the state water-clock.

Not all the sculptural developments of Ajanta are Kanishkan. The facade of Cave Nineteen, of some centuries later, shows in a wonderful manner the richness and variety of the elements to which the Mahayana had opened the door. Buddha is there treated not simply as the guru whose every trace and footstep is sacred, but as a great iiistoric character, to be portrayed in many ways and from many different points of view. He is being