Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/228

 194 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. that it was intended to be one of the most highly finished monasteries in the group. The pillars of the faade, with one exception, are all destroyed : only the capitals, still attached to the roof, testify to the beauty of design and life and finish of the work. The woodcut No. in represents one of these bracket capitals, carved in much the same pattern as the others. The true capital having overhanging leaves, analogous to the Ionic volutes, and which forms so marked a feature in subse- quent Indian architecture, seems first to have been perfected about the time this cave was excavated. It is so like in details to those in cave No. 3 at Aurangabad 1 that there can be little hesitation in assigning them to the same age. The capitals, pillars, and pilasters in this and Nos. i, 2, and 2 1 to 26, with the very similar ones at Auranga- bad may be taken as the types of the last and most elaborate phase of Buddhist architectural decoration in Western India. Caves Nos. i and 2 are among the most richly sculptured of the caves. The facade, in- deed, of No. i is the most elaborate and beau- tiful of its class at Ajanta, and, with the corre- sponding caves at the opposite end, conveys a higher idea of the perfection to which decorative sculpture had attained at that age than anything else at Ajanta. 2 Capital from Verandah ot Cave 24. (From a Photograph.) 1 'Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. iii. pp. 66, 69, and plates 44-47- 2 Curiously enough, on the roof of cave i, there are four square compartments representing the same scene in different manners a king, or very important personage, drinking out of a cup, with male and female attendants. What the story is, is not known, but the persons represented are not Indians, but Persians, and the costumes those of the Sassanian period. See Mr. Fergusson ' On the Identification of the Portrait of Chosroes II. among the Paintings in the Caves at Ajanta,' in 'Jour. R. Asiatic Society,' vol. xi. (N.S. ), pp. 155-170. Copies of these pictures by Mr Griffiths were among those destroyed by fire in the India Museum at Kensington. Griffiths' ' Ajanta Paintings,' vol. ii. plates 94, 95.