Page:The Rock-cut Temples of India.djvu/26

Introduction. It is in one of these ravines, on the southern side of the valley of the Tapty, about three miles from the outer edge or ghât, that the Caves of Ajunta are situated.

In order to render the following description of these caves intelligible, it is necessary, before proceeding further, to explain how the numbers by which they are known came to be attached to them. When I visited the caves in 1839, some of them had names, but such as neither indicated their age nor the purposes for which they were excavated, and these were applied so loosely that the guides frequently gave the same name first to one cave and then to another. To avoid all difficulty, I numbered them like houses in a street, beginning with the most northern, or the cave furthest down the stream, and proceeded to No. 27, the last accessible cave at the southern end.

According to this arrangement, the oldest group consists of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, and the series becomes more and more modern very nearly in the exact ratio on which it diverges on either hand from this central group. Thus the group from No. 13 to No. 19 comes next in age, and beyond these the northern Caves, Nos. 1 to 7; and the southern, Nos. 20 to 27, are probably cotemporary or nearly so. The earliest Viharas, Nos. 11 and 12, were probably excavated in the century which preceded the Christian era—they may be older; while the excavation of No. 1 and No. 26 probably did not long precede the first Mahomedan Conquest. It may also be remarked, that Nos. 9, 10, 19, and 26 are Chaitya, or Church caves; the remaining twenty-three are Viharas. There are no Brahmanical caves at Ajunta, but some sculpture that approaches very nearly to that religion in character, and may have been excavated either after the caves were abandoned by their original occupants, or during some period of temporary supremacy. xx