Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/184

 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. with wooden ribs, the mortices for which are still there, and their marks can still be traced in the roof, but the wood itself is gone. There is a short Pali inscription on this cave, at the right side of the facade, which seems to be integral, but unfortunately it does not contain names that can be identified ; l but from the form of the characters a palaeographist would almost certainly place it considerably anterior to the Christian Era. Next to this, the second chaitya here (No. 9), and probably not much later in point of age, is the lowest down on the cliff, and is of the smallest class, being only 45 ft. by 22 ft. 9 in. in width, and 23 ft. high. All its woodwork has perished, though it would not be difficult to restore it from the mortices left and the representations of itself on the facade. There are several inscriptions, but they are not integral : they are painted on the walls, and belong, from the form of their characters, to about the 6th or 7th century of our era, when the frescoes seem to have been renewed, so that the real tests of its age are, first, its position in the series, which make it, with a neighbouring vihara(No. 12), undoubtedly one of the oldest there; the other test is the architecture of its facade, which so much resembles that of the Nasik chaitya that it cannot be very far off in date. It may, however, be somewhat earlier, as the pillars in the interior slope inwards at an angle somewhere between that found at Bhaja and that at Bedsa ; and, in so far as that is a test of age, it is in favour of a greater antiquity in the Ajanta example. Such a criterion, however, dependent on the choice of the superintendent of the excavation, is far too delicate to use with much confidence as a chronometrical test. The facades of both these caves are so much ruined by the rock falling away that it is impossible to assert that there was no sculpture on the lower parts. None, certainly, exists in the interior, where everything depends on painting ; and it is, to say the least of it, very improbable that any figure-sculpture adorned No. 9 the figures of Buddha on the sides of the court being of much later date while it seems likely that No. 10 also depended wholly on conventional architectural forms for its adornment. 2 The next chaitya cave in this series (No. 19) is separated from these two by a very long interval of time. Unfortunately, 1 It may be read "A facade or entrance, the gift of Katahadi Vasishthi- putra." ' Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. iv. p. 116. 2 What fragments of painting remain in this cave (No. 10) differ markedly in the costumes of the figures and their physiognomy from what we find in the other caves, and are evidently of much earlier date. 'Notes on the Bauddha Rock-cut Temples of Ajantii,' plates 8-1 1 ; ' Cave Temples,' plate 29 ; ' Inscriptions from the Cave Temples of Western India,' plate 34, p. 67 ; Workman's ' Through Town and Jungle,' p. 159.