Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/89

66 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY which we still see in the rocky caves of Ajanta ; by the Asokan rail, used as the front of a verandah ; and by the horse-shoe window, breaking the line of the roof, or mansard. Now the instinct of cave- makers was to make their fronts as closely as possible resemble the outsides of the buildings of their period.

But a style creates a tradition, which persists long after the original reason for it has dis- appeared. Thus the horse-shoe ornament and the Asokan rail become a mannerism at Ajanta, diverg- ing constantly further and further from their true intention ; and by these progressive changes we can make a rough estimate of the ages of the caves. In Nine and Twelve they are used with obvious sincerity, reflecting the conceptions of their age, in the same way that the early printers of Europe laboured to make their machine-printed books look as if they had been written by hand. On viharas Eight and Thirteen they do not occur at all. Evidently the founders were too early or too poor to indulge in such elaboration. Chaitya Number Ten had a timber front, which has fallen away and leaves no trace of its image or likeness, save in the panels sculptured in the rocks on either side. But these horse-shoe ornaments do not altogether cease till after Cave Nineteen. At first they are frankly windows in house fronts. In Cave Twelve. they are to suggest used fan-lights over the cell-doors and run round the walls connecting one with another in simple dignity. In Caves