Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/95

70 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY India. It characterises all monastic orders everywhere. It is in the very nature of the monastic idea, and nowhere have we a better opportunity of watching its action than at Ajanta. For the Buddhist orders, like those of Europe, were demo- cratic. No stain or fetter of birth barred entrance into them. The sramanas, unlike the Brahmanas, testified Megasthenes three and a half centuries before Christ, are not born to their condition, but are taken from all classes of the population. Thus they represented the whole national life of their time, and we owe the beauty of their architecture to the taste and imagination of the monks themselves.

But we must remember that for command of means the monks depended upon neighbouring kings and cities. It was an act of surpassing merit to excavate caves or adorn chaitya-halls for religious communities. Kings remitted the taxes of whole villages, which thus became the monastery glebe. Noblemen and great ministers devoted vast sums to the making of images, cloisters, and shrines. There is an inscription in the Kuda Caves ^ which shows that a whole family of king's officers, including the daughters-in-law, joined to contribute the expenses of the various definite items necessary for the making of a Buddha chapel. In the karma thus accumulated not one of this loving and obedient group must be left out. Here at Ajanta itself Cave Sixteen is made by a minister


 * A place 45 miles south of Bombay. Very early caves.