Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/156

120 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY of the Gandharan monks to take refuge in the viharas and monastic universities of India. This is the event that is marked in the Ajantan series of caves by Number Nineteen. Here on the outside we have for the first time the employment of carvings of Buddha as part of the decorations included in the original architectural scheme. It is a secularised Buddha, moreover ; a Buddha who, as already said, has been seen from a new point of view as a great historical character. He receives a banner. He is crowned by flying figures. The chequer-pattern appears here and there, in lieu of the Asokan rail which it represents. And inside the hall we have that great multitude of Buddhas, in the triforium and on the capitals, in those richly- decorated niches, for which Fergusson's account of the Gandharan monasteries has prepared us. But these represent a more Indianised and religious type than the panels of the outside. The date and source of the new influence is still further fixed by the indubitable fact of the choga, or robe, worn by the Buddha on the dagoba.

We have seen that, according to the evidence of the inscription. Cave Seventeen with its shrine, and the cistern under Eighteen, may be taken as completed about the year A.D. 520. It is my personal opinion that the right-hand series of caves from Six to One were undertaken, or at least finished, not long after this date, and distinctly before the arrival of the refugees from Gandhara. Ajanta must have been one of the most notable of Indian univer-