The Ajanta Caves (Ajiṇṭhā leni; Marathi: अजिंठा लेणी) in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE. The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as "the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting", which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales. The caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BCE, with the second group of caves built around 400–650 CE according to older accounts, or all in a brief period of 460 to 480 according to the recent proposals of Walter M. Spink. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The caves are located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, near Jalgaon and just outside the village of Ajinṭhā 20°31′56″N 75°44′44″E), about 59 kilometres from Jalgaon railway station on the Delhi – Mumbai line and Howrah-Nagpur-Mumbai line of the Central Railway zone, and 104 kilometres from the city of Aurangabad. They are 100 kilometres from the Ellora Caves, which contain Hindu and Jain temples as well as Buddhist caves, the last dating from a period similar to Ajanta. The Ajanta caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur, and although they are now along and above a modern pathway running across the cliff they were originally reached by individual stairs or ladders from the side of the river 35 to 110 feet below.

 

The area was previously heavily forested, and after the site ceased to be used the caves were covered by jungle until accidentally rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer on a hunting party. They are Buddhist monastic buildings, apparently representing a number of distinct "monasteries" or colleges. The caves are numbered 1 to 28 according to their place along the path, beginning at the entrance. Several are unfinished and some barely begun and others are small shrines, included in the traditional numbering as e.g. "9A"; "Cave 15A" was still hidden under rubble when the numbering was done. Further round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

 

The caves form the largest corpus of early Indian wall-painting; other survivals from the area of modern India are very few, though they are related to 5th-century paintings at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The elaborate architectural carving in many caves is also very rare, and the style of the many figure sculptures is highly local, found only at a few nearby contemporary sites, although the Ajanta tradition can be related to the later Hindu Ellora Caves and other sites.

 

HISTORY

Like the other ancient Buddhist monasteries, Ajanta had a large emphasis on teaching, and was divided into several different caves for living, education and worship, under a central direction. Monks were probably assigned to specific caves for living. The layout reflects this organizational structure, with most of the caves only connected through the exterior. The 7th-century travelling Chinese scholar Xuanzang informs us that Dignaga, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author of well-known books on logic, lived at Ajanta in the 5th century. In its prime the settlement would have accommodated several hundred teachers and pupils. Many monks who had finished their first training may have returned to Ajanta during the monsoon season from an itinerant lifestyle.

 

The caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct periods, separated by several centuries.

 

CAVES OF THE FIRST (SATAVAHANA) PERIOD

The earliest group of caves consists of caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A. According to Walter Spink, they were made during the period 100 BCE to 100 CE, probably under the patronage of the Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE – c. 220 CE) who ruled the region. Other datings prefer the period 300 BCE to 100 BCE, though the grouping of the earlier caves is generally agreed. More early caves may have vanished through later excavations. Of these, caves 9 and 10 are stupa halls of chaitya-griha form, and caves 12, 13, and 15A are vihāras (see the architecture section below for descriptions of these types). The first phase is still often called the Hinayāna phase, as it originated when, using traditional terminology, the Hinayāna or Lesser Vehicle tradition of Buddhism was dominant, when the Buddha was revered symbolically. However the use of the term Hinayana for this period of Buddhism is now deprecated by historians; equally the caves of the second period are now mostly dated too early to be properly called Mahayana, and do not yet show the full expanded cast of supernatural beings characteristic of that phase of Buddhist art. The first Satavahana period caves lacked figurative sculpture, emphasizing the stupa instead, and in the caves of the second period the overwhelming majority of images represent the Buddha alone, or narrative scenes of his lives.

 

Spink believes that some time after the Satavahana period caves were made the site was abandoned for a considerable period until the mid-5th century, probably because the region had turned mainly Hindu

 

CAVES OF THE LATER OR VAKATAKA PERIOD

The second phase began in the 5th century. For a long time it was thought that the later caves were made over a long period from the 4th to the 7th centuries CE, but in recent decades a series of studies by the leading expert on the caves, Walter M. Spink, have argued that most of the work took place over the very brief period from 460 to 480 CE, during the reign of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty. This view has been criticized by some scholars, but is now broadly accepted by most authors of general books on Indian art, for example Huntington and Harle.

 

The second phase is still often called the Mahāyāna or Greater Vehicle phase, but scholars now tend to avoid this nomenclature because of the problems that have surfaced regarding our understanding of Mahāyāna.

 

Some 20 cave temples were simultaneously created, for the most part viharas with a sanctuary at the back. The most elaborate caves were produced in this period, which included some "modernization" of earlier caves. Spink claims that it is possible to establish dating for this period with a very high level of precision; a fuller account of his chronology is given below. Although debate continues, Spink's ideas are increasingly widely accepted, at least in their broad conclusions. The Archaeological Survey of India website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th – 6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". Caves of the second period are 1–8, 11, 14–29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19, 26, and 29 are chaitya-grihas, the rest viharas.

 

According to Spink, the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually abandoned and forgotten. During the intervening centuries, the jungle grew back and the caves were hidden, unvisited and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them.

 

REDISCOVERY

On 28 April 1819, a British officer for the Madras Presidency, John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tiger, accidentally discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 deep within the tangled undergrowth. There were local people already using the caves for prayers with a small fire, when he arrived. Exploring that first cave, long since a home to nothing more than birds and bats and a lair for other larger animals, Captain Smith vandalized the wall by scratching his name and the date, April 1819. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822. Within a few decades, the caves became famous for their exotic setting, impressive architecture, and above all their exceptional, all but unique paintings. A number of large projects to copy the paintings were made in the century after rediscovery, covered below. In 1848 the Royal Asiatic Society established the "Bombay Cave Temple Commission" to clear, tidy and record the most important rock-cut sites in the Bombay Presidency, with John Wilson, as president. In 1861 this became the nucleus of the new Archaeological Survey of India. Until the Nizam of Hyderabad built the modern path between the caves, among other efforts to make the site easy to visit, a trip to Ajanta was a considerable adventure, and contemporary accounts dwell with relish on the dangers from falls off narrow ledges, animals and the Bhil people, who were armed with bows and arrows and had a fearsome reputation.

 

Today, fairly easily combined with Ellora in a single trip, the caves are the most popular tourist destination in Mahrashtra, and are often crowded at holiday times, increasing the threat to the caves, especially the paintings. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation announced plans to add to the ASI visitor centre at the entrance complete replicas of caves 1, 2, 16 & 17 to reduce crowding in the originals, and enable visitors to receive a better visual idea of the paintings, which are dimly-lit and hard to read in the caves. Figures for the year to March 2010 showed a total of 390,000 visitors to the site, divided into 362,000 domestic and 27,000 foreign. The trends over the previous few years show a considerable growth in domestic visitors, but a decline in foreign ones; the year to 2010 was the first in which foreign visitors to Ellora exceeded those to Ajanta.

 

PAINTINGS

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 9 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of court-led painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painter had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars".

 

Four of the later caves have large and relatively well-preserved mural paintings which "have come to represent Indian mural painting to the non-specialist", and fall into two stylistic groups, with the most famous in Caves 16 and 17, and apparently later paintings in Caves 1 and 2. The latter group were thought to be a century or more later than the others, but the revised chronology proposed by Spink would place them much closer to the earlier group, perhaps contemporary with it in a more progressive style, or one reflecting a team from a different region. The paintings are in "dry fresco", painted on top of a dry plaster surface rather than into wet plaster.

 

All the paintings appear to be the work of painters at least as used to decorating palaces as temples, and show a familiarity with and interest in details of the life of a wealthy court. We know from literary sources that painting was widely practised and appreciated in the courts of the Gupta period. Unlike much Indian painting, compositions are not laid out in horizontal compartments like a frieze, but show large scenes spreading in all directions from a single figure or group at the centre. The ceilings are also painted with sophisticated and elaborate decorative motifs, many derived from sculpture. The paintings in cave 1, which according to Spink was commissioned by Harisena himself, concentrate on those Jataka tales which show previous lives of the Buddha as a king, rather than as an animal or human commoner, and so show settings from contemporary palace life.

 

In general the later caves seem to have been painted on finished areas as excavating work continued elsewhere in the cave, as shown in caves 2 and 16 in particular. According to Spink's account of the chronology of the caves, the abandonment of work in 478 after a brief busy period accounts for the absence of painting in caves such as 4 and 17, the later being plastered in preparation for paintings that were never done.

 

COPIES

The paintings have deteriorated significantly since they were rediscovered, and a number of 19th-century copies and drawings are important for a complete understanding of the works. However, the earliest projects to copy the paintings were plagued by bad fortune. In 1846, Major Robert Gill, an Army officer from Madras presidency and a painter, was appointed by the Royal Asiatic Society to replicate the frescoes on the cave walls to exhibit these paintings in England. Gill worked on his painting at the site from 1844 to 1863 (though he continued to be based there until his death in 1875, writing books and photographing) and made 27 copies of large sections of murals, but all but four were destroyed in a fire at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866, where they were on display.

 

Another attempt was made in 1872 when the Bombay Presidency commissioned John Griffiths, then principal of the Bombay School of Art, to work with his students to make new copies, again for shipping to England. They worked on this for thirteen years and some 300 canvases were produced, many of which were displayed at the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road in London, one of the forerunners of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But in 1885 another fire destroyed over a hundred paintings that were in storage. The V&A still has 166 paintings surviving from both sets, though none have been on permanent display since 1955. The largest are some 3 × 6 metres. A conservation project was undertaken on about half of them in 2006, also involving the University of Northumbria. Griffith and his students had unfortunately painted many of the paintings with "cheap varnish" in order to make them easier to see, which has added to the deterioration of the originals, as has, according to Spink and others, recent cleaning by the ASI.

 

A further set of copies were made between 1909 and 1911 by Christiana Herringham (Lady Herringham) and a group of students from the Calcutta School of Art that included the future Indian Modernist painter Nandalal Bose. The copies were published in full colour as the first publication of London's fledgling India Society. More than the earlier copies, these aimed to fill in holes and damage to recreate the original condition rather than record the state of the paintings as she was seeing them. According to one writer, unlike the paintings created by her predecessors Griffiths and Gill, whose copies were influenced by British Victorian styles of painting, those of the Herringham expedition preferred an 'Indian Renascence' aesthetic of the type pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore.

 

Early photographic surveys were made by Robert Gill, who learnt to use a camera from about 1856, and whose photos, including some using stereoscopy, were used in books by him and Fergusson (many are available online from the British Library), then Victor Goloubew in 1911 and E.L. Vassey, who took the photos in the four volume study of the caves by Ghulam Yazdani (published 1930–1955).

 

ARCHITECTURE

The monasteries mostly consist of vihara halls for prayer and living, which are typically rectangular with small square dormitory cells cut into the walls, and by the second period a shrine or sanctuary at the rear centred on a large statue of the Buddha, also carved from the living rock. This change reflects the movement from Hinayana to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other type of main hall is the narrower and higher chaitya hall with a stupa as the focus at the far end, and a narrow aisle around the walls, behind a range of pillars placed close together. Other plainer rooms were for sleeping and other activities. Some of the caves have elaborate carved entrances, some with large windows over the door to admit light. There is often a colonnaded porch or verandah, with another space inside the doors running the width of the cave.

 

The central square space of the interior of the viharas is defined by square columns forming a more or less square open area. Outside this are long rectangular aisles on each side, forming a kind of cloister. Along the side and rear walls are a number of small cells entered by a narrow doorway; these are roughly square, and have small niches on their back walls. Originally they had wooden doors. The centre of the rear wall has a larger shrine-room behind, containing a large Buddha statue. The viharas of the earlier period are much simpler, and lack shrines. Spink in fact places the change to a design with a shrine to the middle of the second period, with many caves being adapted to add a shrine in mid-excavation, or after the original phase.

 

The plan of Cave 1 shows one of the largest viharas, but is fairly typical of the later group. Many others, such as Cave 16, lack the vestibule to the shrine, which leads straight off the main hall. Cave 6 is two viharas, one above the other, connected by internal stairs, with sanctuaries on both levels.

 

The four completed chaitya halls are caves 9 and 10 from the early period, and caves 19 and 26 from the later period of construction. All follow the typical form found elsewhere, with high ceilings and a central "nave" leading to the stupa, which is near the back, but allows walking behind it, as walking around stupas was (and remains) a common element of Buddhist worship (pradakshina). The later two have high ribbed roofs, which reflect timber forms, and the earlier two are thought to have used actual timber ribs, which have now perished. The two later halls have a rather unusual arrangement (also found in Cave 10 at Ellora) where the stupa is fronted by a large relief sculpture of the Buddha, standing in Cave 19 and seated in Cave 26. Cave 29 is a late and very incomplete chaitya hall.

 

The form of columns in the work of the first period is very plain and un-embellished, with both chaitya halls using simple octagonal columns, which were painted with figures. In the second period columns were far more varied and inventive, often changing profile over their height, and with elaborate carved capitals, often spreading wide. Many columns are carved over all their surface, some fluted and others carved with decoration all over, as in cave 1.

 

The flood basalt rock of the cliff, part of the Deccan Traps formed by successive volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous, is layered horizontally, and somewhat variable in quality, so the excavators had to amend their plans in places, and in places there have been collapses in the intervening centuries, as with the lost portico to cave 1. Excavation began by cutting a narrow tunnel at roof level, which was expanded downwards and outwards; the half-built vihara cave 24 shows the method. Spink believes that for the first caves of the second period the excavators had to relearn skills and techniques that had been lost in the centuries since the first period, which were then transmitted to be used at later rock-cut sites in the region, such as Ellora, and the Elephanta, Bagh, Badami and Aurangabad Caves.

 

The caves from the first period seem to have been paid for by a number of different patrons, with several inscriptions recording the donation of particular portions of a single cave, but according to Spink the later caves were each commissioned as a complete unit by a single patron from the local rulers or their court elites. After the death of Harisena smaller donors got their chance to add small "shrinelets" between the caves or add statues to existing caves, and some two hundred of these "intrusive" additions were made in sculpture, with a further number of intrusive paintings, up to three hundred in cave 10 alone.

 

A grand gateway to the site, at the apex of the gorge's horsehoe between caves 15 and 16, was approached from the river, and is decorated with elephants on either side and a nāga, or protective snake deity.

 

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CAVES

In the pre-Christian era, the Buddha was represented symbolically, in the form of the stupa. Thus, halls were made with stupas to venerate the Buddha. In later periods the images of the Buddha started to be made in coins, relic caskets, relief or loose sculptural forms, etc. However, it took a while for the human representation of the Buddha to appear in Buddhist art. One of the earliest evidences of the Buddha's human representations are found at Buddhist archaeological sites, such as Goli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati. The monasteries of those sites were built in less durable media, such as wood, brick, and stone. As far as the genre of rock-cut architecture is concerned it took many centuries for the Buddha image to be depicted. Nobody knows for sure at which rock-cut cave site the first image of the Buddha was depicted. Current research indicates that Buddha images in a portable form, made of wood or stone, were introduced, for the first time, at Kanheri, to be followed soon at Ajanta Cave 8 (Dhavalikar, Jadhav, Spink, Singh). While the Kanheri example dates to 4th or 5th century CE, the Ajanta example has been dated to c. 462–478 CE (Spink). None of the rock-cut monasteries prior to these dates, and other than these examples, show any Buddha image although hundreds of rock-cut caves were made throughout India during the first few centuries CE. And, in those caves, it is the stupa that is the object of veneration, not the image. Images of the Buddha are not found in Buddhist sailagrhas (rock-cut complexes) until the times of the Kanheri (4th–5th century CE) and Ajanta examples (c. 462–478 CE).

 

The caves of the second period, now all dated to the 5th century, were typically described as "Mahayana", but do not show the features associated with later Mahayana Buddhism. Although the beginnings of Mahāyāna teachings go back to the 1st century there is little art and archaeological evidence to suggest that it became a mainstream cult for several centuries. In Mahayana it is not Gautama Buddha but the Bodhisattva who is important, including "deity" Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Tara, as well as aspects of the Buddha such as Aksobhya, and Amitabha. Except for a few Bodhisattva, these are not depicted at Ajanta, where the Buddha remains the dominant figure. Even the Bodhisattva images of Ajanta are never central objects of worship, but are always shown as attendants of the Buddha in the shrine. If a Bodhisattva is shown in isolation, as in the Astabhaya scenes, these were done in the very last years of activities at Ajanta, and are mostly 'intrusive' in nature, meaning that they were not planned by the original patrons, and were added by new donors after the original patrons had suddenly abandoned the region in the wake of Emperor Harisena's death.

 

The contrast between iconic and aniconic representations, that is, the stupa on one hand and the image of the Buddha on the other, is now being seen as a construct of the modern scholar rather than a reality of the past. The second phase of Ajanta shows that the stupa and image coincided together. If the entire corpus of the art of Ajanta including sculpture, iconography, architecture, epigraphy, and painting are analysed afresh it will become clear that there was no duality between the symbolic and human forms of the Buddha, as far as the 5th-century phase of Ajanta is concerned. That is why most current scholars tend to avoid the terms 'Hinayana' and 'Mahayana' in the context of Ajanta. They now prefer to call the second phase by the ruling dynasty, as the Vākāţaka phase.

 

CAVES

CAVE 1

Cave 1 was built on the eastern end of the horse-shoe shaped scarp, and is now the first cave the visitor encounters. This would when first made have been a less prominent position, right at the end of the row. According to Spink, it is one of the latest caves to have been excavated, when the best sites had been taken, and was never fully inaugurated for worship by the dedication of the Buddha image in the central shrine. This is shown by the absence of sooty deposits from butter lamps on the base of the shrine image, and the lack of damage to the paintings that would have been happened if the garland-hooks around the shrine had been in use for any period of time. Although there is no epigraphic evidence, Spink believes that the Vākāţaka Emperor Harishena was the benefactor of the work, and this is reflected in the emphasis on imagery of royalty in the cave, with those Jakata tales being selected that tell of those previous lives of the Buddha in which he was royal.

 

The cliff has a more steep slope here than at other caves, so to achieve a tall grand facade it was necessary to cut far back into the slope, giving a large courtyard in front of the facade. There was originally a columned portico in front of the present facade, which can be seen "half-intact in the 1880s" in pictures of the site, but this fell down completely and the remains, despite containing fine carving, were carelessly thrown down the slope into the river, from where they have been lost, presumably carried away in monsoon torrents.

 

This cave has one of the most elaborate carved façades, with relief sculptures on entablature and ridges, and most surfaces embellished with decorative carving. There are scenes carved from the life of the Buddha as well as a number of decorative motifs. A two pillared portico, visible in the 19th-century photographs, has since perished. The cave has a front-court with cells fronted by pillared vestibules on either side. These have a high plinth level. The cave has a porch with simple cells on both ends. The absence of pillared vestibules on the ends suggest that the porch was not excavated in the latest phase of Ajanta when pillared vestibules had become a necessity and norm. Most areas of the porch were once covered with murals, of which many fragments remain, especially on the ceiling. There are three doorways: a central doorway and two side doorways. Two square windows were carved between the doorways to brighten the interiors.

 

Each wall of the hall inside is nearly 12 m long and 6.1 m high. Twelve pillars make a square colonnade inside supporting the ceiling, and creating spacious aisles along the walls. There is a shrine carved on the rear wall to house an impressive seated image of the Buddha, his hands being in the dharmachakrapravartana mudra. There are four cells on each of the left, rear, and the right walls, though due to rock fault there are none at the ends of the rear aisle. The walls are covered with paintings in a fair state of preservation, though the full scheme was never completed. The scenes depicted are mostly didactic, devotional, and ornamental, with scenes from the Jataka stories of the Buddha's former existences as a bodhisattva), the life of the Gautama Buddha, and those of his veneration. The two most famous individual painted images at Ajanta are the two over-life size figures of the protective bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani on either side of the entrance to the Buddha shrine on the wall of the rear aisle (see illustrations above). According to Spink, the original dating of the paintings to about 625 arose largely or entirely because James Fegusson, a 19th-century architectural historian, had decided that a scene showing an ambassador being received, with figures in Persian dress, represented a recorded embassy to Persia (from a Hindu monarch at that) around that date.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, adjacent to Cave 1, is known for the paintings that have been preserved on its walls, ceilings, and pillars. It looks similar to Cave 1 and is in a better state of preservation.

 

Cave 2 has a porch quite different from Cave one. Even the façade carvings seem to be different. The cave is supported by robust pillars, ornamented with designs. The front porch consists of cells supported by pillared vestibules on both ends. The cells on the previously "wasted areas" were needed to meet the greater housing requirements in later years. Porch-end cells became a trend in all later Vakataka excavations. The simple single cells on porch-ends were converted into CPVs or were planned to provide more room, symmetry, and beauty.

 

The paintings on the ceilings and walls of this porch have been widely published. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences as Bodhisattva. Just as the stories illustrated in cave 1 emphasize kingship, those in cave 2 show many "noble and powerful" women in prominent roles, leading to suggestions that the patron was an unknown woman. The porch's rear wall has a doorway in the center, which allows entrance to the hall. On either side of the door is a square-shaped window to brighten the interior.

 

The hall has four colonnades which are supporting the ceiling and surrounding a square in the center of the hall. Each arm or colonnade of the square is parallel to the respective walls of the hall, making an aisle in between. The colonnades have rock-beams above and below them. The capitals are carved and painted with various decorative themes that include ornamental, human, animal, vegetative, and semi-divine forms.

 

Paintings appear on almost every surface of the cave except for the floor. At various places the art work has become eroded due to decay and human interference. Therefore, many areas of the painted walls, ceilings, and pillars are fragmentary. The painted narratives of the Jataka tales are depicted only on the walls, which demanded the special attention of the devotee. They are didactic in nature, meant to inform the community about the Buddha's teachings and life through successive rebirths. Their placement on the walls required the devotee to walk through the aisles and 'read' the narratives depicted in various episodes. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research since the site's rediscovery in 1819. Dieter Schlingloff's identifications have updated our knowledge on the subject.

 

CAVE 4

The Archeological Survey of India board outside the caves gives the following detail about cave 4: "This is the largest monastery planned on a grandiose scale but was never finished. An inscription on the pedestal of the buddha's image mentions that it was a gift from a person named Mathura and paleographically belongs to 6th century A.D. It consists of a verandah, a hypostylar hall, sanctum with an antechamber and a series of unfinished cells. The rear wall of the verandah contains the panel of Litany of Avalokiteśvara".

 

The sanctuary houses a colossal image of the Buddha in preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas and celestial nymphs hovering above.

 

CAVES 9-10

Caves 9 and 10 are the two chaitya halls from the first period of construction, though both were also undergoing an uncompleted reworking at the end of the second period. Cave 10 was perhaps originally of the 1st century BCE, and cave 9 about a hundred years later. The small "shrinelets" called caves 9A to 9D and 10A also date from the second period, and were commissioned by individuals.

 

The paintings in cave 10 include some surviving from the early period, many from an incomplete programme of modernization in the second period, and a very large number of smaller late intrusive images, nearly all Buddhas and many with donor inscriptions from individuals. These mostly avoided over-painting the "official" programme and after the best positions were used up are tucked away in less prominent positions not yet painted; the total of these (including those now lost) was probably over 300, and the hands of many different artists are visible.

 

OTHER CAVES

Cave 3 is merely a start of an excavation; according to Spink it was begun right at the end of the final period of work and soon abandoned. Caves 5 and 6 are viharas, the latter on two floors, that were late works of which only the lower floor of cave 6 was ever finished. The upper floor of cave 6 has many private votive sculptures, and a shrine Buddha, but is otherwise unfinished. Cave 7 has a grand facade with two porticos but, perhaps because of faults in the rock, which posed problems in many caves, was never taken very deep into the cliff, and consists only of the two porticos and a shrine room with antechamber, with no central hall. Some cells were fitted in.

 

Cave 8 was long thought to date to the first period of construction, but Spink sees it as perhaps the earliest cave from the second period, its shrine an "afterthought". The statue may have been loose rather than carved from the living rock, as it has now vanished. The cave was painted, but only traces remain.

 

SPINK´S DETAILED CHRONOLOGY

Walter M. Spink has over recent decades developed a very precise and circumstantial chronology for the second period of work on the site, which unlike earlier scholars, he places entirely in the 5th century. This is based on evidence such as the inscriptions and artistic style, combined with the many uncompleted elements of the caves. He believes the earlier group of caves, which like other scholars he dates only approximately, to the period "between 100 BCE – 100 CE", were at some later point completely abandoned and remained so "for over three centuries", as the local population had turned mainly Hindu. This changed with the accession of the Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka Dynasty, who reigned from 460 to his death in 477. Harisena extended the Central Indian Vakataka Empire to include a stretch of the east coast of India; the Gupta Empire ruled northern India at the same period, and the Pallava dynasty much of the south.

 

According to Spink, Harisena encouraged a group of associates, including his prime minister Varahadeva and Upendragupta, the sub-king in whose territory Ajanta was, to dig out new caves, which were individually commissioned, some containing inscriptions recording the donation. This activity began in 462 but was mostly suspended in 468 because of threats from the neighbouring Asmaka kings. Work continued on only caves 1, Harisena's own commission, and 17–20, commissioned by Upendragupta. In 472 the situation was such that work was suspended completely, in a period that Spink calls "the Hiatus", which lasted until about 475, by which time the Asmakas had replaced Upendragupta as the local rulers.

 

Work was then resumed, but again disrupted by Harisena's death in 477, soon after which major excavation ceased, except at cave 26, which the Asmakas were sponsoring themselves. The Asmakas launched a revolt against Harisena's son, which brought about the end of the Vakataka Dynasty. In the years 478–480 major excavation by important patrons was replaced by a rash of "intrusions" – statues added to existing caves, and small shrines dotted about where there was space between them. These were commissioned by less powerful individuals, some monks, who had not previously been able to make additions to the large excavations of the rulers and courtiers. They were added to the facades, the return sides of the entrances, and to walls inside the caves. According to Spink, "After 480, not a single image was ever made again at the site", and as Hinduism again dominated the region, the site was again abandoned, this time for over a millennium.

 

Spink does not use "circa" in his dates, but says that "one should allow a margin of error of one year or perhaps even two in all cases".

 

IMPACT ON MODERN INDIAN PAINTINGS

The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka.

 

The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists examples from ancient India to follow. Nandlal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.

 

WIKIPEDIA

example

An example of A High Graded AS Photography sketchbook.

Example

Barnard Castle is a well-documented example of a ringwork which developed into a shell keep. It is one of the largest castles in the north of England and its importance lies not only in the good state of preservation of its standing remains but also in the wide range of ancillary features which survive as buried features within its four wards. Equally important are its associations with the Balliols and the Earls of Warwick, the former being one of the most important families in Scottish medieval history and the latter in later medieval English history.

The monument is situated on a cliff above the River Tees and includes an early 12th century ringwork, a 12th to 14th century shell keep castle with four wards or enclosures, a chapel and a dovecote. Formerly, an outer ditch enclosed the east side of the castle between the curtain wall and the Horse Market. Although the remains of this ditch will survive beneath later urban development, it is not included in the scheduling as the extent of the remains is not sufficiently understood. A series of partial excavations carried out within the later castle walls between 1974 and 1982 has shown that the earliest fortification dates to between c.1109 and 1125. It was constructed overlooking the river where the cliff turned eastwards into the mouth of a gully. A ditch was quarried in an arc from the north cliff to the west cliff, enclosing a roughly circular area with a diameter of c.50m. The upcast from the ditch was used to create a rampart along the inside of the ditch and this, together with the cliff edge, was surmounted by a timber palisade. Within this ringwork the remains of wooden outbuildings and a large timber hall have been found beneath the floors of later stone buildings. Access to the interior was via a bridge across the ditch which led through a timber gatehouse located at the junction of the ditch with the west cliff. This gatehouse was soon afterwards rebuilt in stone and was the earliest stone building of the castle. The main period of reconstruction came in two phases between c.1125 and 1170. During the first phase, 1125-1140, the ringwork was strengthened by the excavation of the Great Ditch, a substantial rock-cut feature along the line of the earlier ditch, and the palisade was replaced by a multi-angular curtain wall with a wall walk and an interval tower along the east side. The original entrance was blocked and a new entrance was built alongside it at the head of a wooden bridge across the Great Ditch. The stone gatehouse became incorporated into the larger Headlam Tower and a small rectangular keep was built at the north east angle of the enclosure. In addition, the rampart was widened to create a site for timber buildings along the inside of the east and south curtain. The resultant shell keep, occupying the site of the original ringwork, formed the Inner Ward of the castle. To the south and east were three more wards which originated at the same time as the ringwork though they were not fortified in stone until the second phase of rebuilding between 1140 and 1170. The smallest of these was the Middle Ward, situated south of the Inner Ward with the Great Ditch forming its north side and walls enclosing it on the south, west and east sides. The walls here have been heavily robbed but it is clear that this enclosure acted as a barbican or fortified entry for the Inner Ward. It controlled access to the Inner Ward by means of a gate beneath the Constable Tower, a three storey gate-tower on the south side of the Middle Ward. Little of the Constable Tower remains standing, but its foundations and those of other buildings, located by excavation in the south east corner of the ward, survive as buried remains. The approach to the gate was from the Outer Ward which lay to the south and was the largest of the four wards with an area of c.1.5ha. It was enclosed by a curtain wall on the south, west and east sides, and also by the outer ditch which lay outside the east curtain. On the north side another ditch ran from west to east, below the cross-curtain wall that separated the Outer Ward from the Middle and Town Wards and effectively divided the castle in two. The main route into the castle ran parallel with this ditch before turning north to pass beneath the Constable Tower. The Outer Ward has not been excavated but documentary evidence indicates that a chapel dedicated to St Margaret had been built on the east side by the mid-12th century and bestowed on St Mary's Abbey, York. The remains of this chapel survive incorporated into a later stable. Further remains which survive as buried features beneath the buildings, paddocks, yards and gardens that now occupy the Outer Ward, are the farm buildings belonging to the castle and the gate-tower in the east curtain which controlled the approach from the town. The fourth ward was the Town Ward, located in the north east quarter of the castle and enclosed on the north side by the outer curtain. On the east side it was bounded by the curtain and the outer ditch, on the south side by a cross-curtain wall and, on the west side, by the Great Ditch. Excavations inside the Town Ward have uncovered a number of buildings set against the curtain wall round at least one cobbled courtyard containing a pond and a well. Other buildings and yards occupied the open interior and also the wide bank extending round the inside of the walls. Incorporated into the curtain wall were at least three towers and also a postern or pedestrian gate, located in the east curtain. The east curtain does not survive well round the Town Ward, having in places been replaced by a modern wall. Towards the north angle, however, it survives sufficiently well to illustrate a typical defensive feature of the castle: arrow loops set inside recessed arches. In addition, it includes the remains of Brackenbury Tower, a large rectangular structure of two storeys which projects slightly beyond the wall. The upper storey contained a fireplace, two garderobes or privies, and a window with seats converted from one of three recessed arrow loops. Beneath was a barrel-vaulted basement which also contained a fireplace, a garderobe and cupboards. The arrangements on both floors indicate that the tower had a domestic or administrative function. The curtain wall round the north side of the Town Ward is unusual in that it is too narrow to have carried the usual wall walk. It also contains many nesting boxes for pigeons or doves. Included within it is the north gate, a two storey tower with a chamber above the gate passage and rooms flanking it. Though both ground floor rooms contain fireplaces, that to the right is less elaborate and would have been the guardroom while that to the left opened onto the ward and probably also had an administrative function. The third tower of the Town Ward is a small square structure in the north curtain, adjacent to the Great Ditch. It is known as the Dovecote Tower because the interior, from top to bottom, consists of tiers of nesting boxes. In construction the tower dates, like the rest of the ward, to the later 12th century but, before it was a dovecote, it may have had another function connected with a doorway which now opens into mid-air. The doorway led into another building set against the curtain wall, but nothing of this structure survives above ground. As yet, its buried remains have not been excavated, and so its function and relationship to the Dovecote Tower cannot yet be determined. Between 1170 and 1185, following the second building phase, there was a third period of reconstruction carried out only in the Inner Ward. The timber hall was rebuilt in stone and was connected to the gate-tower by a wall behind which lay kitchens and other ancillary buildings. The keep in the north east angle was replaced by the three-storey Round Tower which had both a military and a domestic function, and, between the tower and the new hall was built the Great Chamber: a three-storey residence for the lords of Barnard Castle. The wall round the Inner Ward was strengthened by the addition of the Postern Tower and the Prison Tower, the latter replacing the earlier projecting tower. A bakehouse was also constructed against the curtain. Following this, there were no further alterations until the 14th century when the hall and service buildings were rebuilt and enlarged by the addition of the Mortham Tower, and the access into the Inner Ward was changed to make it more secure. This was achieved by relocating the bridge over the Great Ditch, so that it now ran alongside the west curtain, and by building a demi-bastion, or semicircular tower, which extended from the original Headlam Tower to the edge of the ditch. The route from the bridge was then walled off so that the way into the Inner Ward was completely covered by the new defences even before it reached the gate under the demi-bastion. Also at this time, a portcullis was inserted into the curtain wall at the bottom of the Great Ditch so that the bridge over the Tees could be protected from the castle. During this period the Outer Ward went out of use and at least one building in the Town Ward was demolished. A wet moat was dug alongside the east wall of the Middle Ward and a tower was built to overlook the moat and protect the drawbridge across it. In this way, the castle was made smaller and more defensible, cheaper to run and also more comfortable for its residents. For the next hundred years no further changes were made, and then modifications were only of a minor and domestic kind, including the insertion of an oriel window into the Great Chamber and the addition of a turret onto the Mortham Tower. The first castle was built by Guy de Balliol to be the caput or chief centre of his estates in the north of England. At that time the site was defended not only by the cliffs alongside the Tees but by a steep gully to the north. This gully has since been infilled but, in the 12th century, it still carried the old Roman road between Bowes and Binchester, and the castle commanded the point where this road forded the river. Guy was succeeded by his nephew Barnard de Balliol who, together with his second son, also called Barnard, was responsible for the reconstruction of the castle and the creation of the borough which bears their name. Throughout the next hundred years, the Balliols grew in power and importance until, in 1290, John Balliol defeated the claim of Robert de Brus and became King of Scotland. In his bid for the Scottish throne, however, he had been dependent on the support of Edward I and, in the war which followed his subsequent refusal to do homage to the English king, he rapidly lost power, was taken prisoner by the English, and lost all his estates save the family lands in Picardy. Meanwhile, Barnard Castle was seized by Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, in response to a long-standing claim that the bishops had rights over the estates which included the castle. Edward I tolerated this for a time but, in 1306, confiscated the lordship of Barnard Castle and granted it in 1307 to Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. From being a home and a stronghold, the castle became merely a source of revenue, and, though it was kept on a war-footing due to the ever-present threat from Scotland, the Beauchamps rarely visited it despite the domestic improvement carried out during their period of lordship. In 1445 the Nevilles succeeded to the Earldom of Warwick and, with the death of Richard Neville at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, the castle passed to Richard, Duke of Gloucester who in 1481 became King Richard III. Richard planned to found an ecclesiastical college within the castle, but these plans had not been realised by the time of his death in 1485.

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries the castle gradually fell into disrepair, as illustrated by surveys done at the time. In 1569 it enjoyed a brief period of importance during the so-called Rising of the North when the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, together with the Scropes and Dacres, moved to release Mary, Queen of Scots from Castle Bolton, place her on the throne of England and restore the country to Catholicism. Their rebellion failed, in part due to the time bought by Sir George Bowes, a loyal supporter of Elizabeth I, who moved to Barnard Castle and managed to withstand a ten-day siege before surrendering the castle, thus giving the Earl of Sussex time to muster an army in support of the queen. Following this, the castle and its estate were rented out by the Crown to various tenants, including the Bowes family, until 1603 when James I granted it to Robert Carr, together with the lordship of Raby. By 1630, both Barnard Castle and Raby were in the possession of Sir Henry Vane who proceeded to dismantle the former to provide building material for his improvements to the latter. Since 1952, by a number of Deeds of Gift, the Inner, Middle and Town Wards have been brought into State care. The ruins are also a Grade I Listed Building. (Scheduling Report)

This is the example tree to illustrate how to read different aspects of the trees contained in the album.

Example

Weather Forecasting: When it’s going to rain, text yourself to “bring an umbrella” and post the forecast on Facebook.

The palanquin is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica (ancient Rome), kiệu [轎] (Vietnam), sedan chair (Britain), litera (Spain), palanquin (France, India, Ghana), jiao (China), liteira (Portugal), wo (วอ, Chinese style known as kiao เกี้ยว) (Thailand), gama (Korea), koshi, ren and kago [駕籠] (Japan) and tahtırevan (Turkey).

 

Smaller litters may take the form of open chairs or beds carried by two or more carriers, some being enclosed for protection from the elements. Larger litters, for example those of the Chinese emperors, may resemble small rooms upon a platform borne upon the shoulders of a dozen or more people. To most efficiently carry a litter, porters will attempt to transfer the load to their shoulders, either by placing the carrying poles upon their shoulders, or the use of a yoke to transfer the load from the carrying poles to the shoulder.

 

DEFINITIONS

A simple litter, often called a king carrier, consists of a sling attached along its length to poles or stretched inside a frame. The poles or frame are carried by porters in front and behind. Such simple litters are common on battlefields and emergency situations, where terrain prohibits wheeled vehicles from carrying away the dead and wounded.

 

Litters can also be created by the expedient of the lashing of poles to a chair. Such litters, consisting of a simple cane chair with maybe an umbrella to ward off the elements and two stout bamboo poles, may still be found in Chinese mountain resorts such as the Huangshan Mountains to carry tourists along scenic paths and to viewing positions inaccessible by other means of transport.

 

A more luxurious version consists of a bed or couch, sometimes enclosed by curtains, for the passenger or passengers to lie on. These are carried by at least two porters in equal numbers in front and behind, using wooden rails that pass through brackets on the sides of the couch. The largest and heaviest types would be carried by draught animals.

 

Another form, commonly called a sedan chair, consists of a chair or windowed cabin suitable for a single occupant, also carried by at least two porters in front and behind, using wooden rails that pass through brackets on the sides of the chair. These porters were known in London as "chairmen". These have been very rare since the 19th century, but such enclosed portable litters have been used as an elite form of transport for centuries, especially in cultures where women are kept secluded.

 

Sedan chairs, in use until the 19th century, were accompanied at night by link-boys who carried torches. Where possible, the link boys escorted the fares to the chairmen, the passengers then being delivered to the door of their lodgings. Several houses in Bath, Somerset, England still have the link extinguishers on the exteriors, shaped like outsized candle snuffers. In the 1970s, entrepreneur and Bathwick resident, John Cuningham, revived the sedan chair service business for a brief amount of time.

 

ANTIQUITY

In pharaonic Egypt and many oriental realms such as China, the ruler and divinities (in the form of an idol) were often transported in a litter in public, frequently in procession, as during state ceremonial or religious festivals.

 

The ancient Hebrews fashioned the Ark of the Covenant to resemble and function as a litter for the ten commandments and presence of God.

 

In Ancient Rome, a litter called lectica or "sella" often carried members of the imperial family, as well as other dignitaries and other members of the rich elite, when not mounted on horseback.

 

The habit must have proven quite persistent, for the Third Council of Braga in 675 AD saw the need to order that bishops, when carrying the relics of martyrs in procession, must walk to the church, and not be carried in a chair, or litter, by deacons clothed in white.

 

In the Catholic Church, Popes were carried the same way in Sedia gestatoria, which was replaced later by the Popemobile.

 

IN ASIA

CHINA

In Han China the elite travelled in light bamboo seats supported on a carrier's back like a backpack. In the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, wooden carriages on poles appear in painted landscape scrolls.

 

A commoner used a wooden or bamboo civil litter (Chinese: 民轎; pinyin: min2 jiao4), while the mandarin class used an official litter (Chinese: 官轎; pinyin: guan1 jiao4) enclosed in silk curtains.

 

The chair with perhaps the greatest importance was the bridal chair. A traditional bride is carried to her wedding ceremony by a "shoulder carriage" (Chinese: 肩輿; pinyin: jiān yú), usually hired. These were lacquered in an auspicious shade of red, richly ornamented and gilded, and were equipped with red silk curtains to screen the bride from onlookers.

 

Sedan chairs were once the only public conveyance in Hong Kong, filling the role of cabs. Chair stands were found at all hotels, wharves, and major crossroads. Public chairs were licensed, and charged according to tariffs which would be displayed inside. Private chairs were an important marker of a person's status. Civil officers' status was denoted by the number of bearers attached to his chair. Before Hong Kong's Peak Tram went into service in 1888, wealthy residents of The Peak were carried on sedan chairs by coolies up the steep paths to their residence including Sir Richard MacDonnell's (former Governor of Hong Kong) summer home, where they could take advantage of the cooler climate. Since 1975 an annual sedan chair race has been held to benefit the Matilda International Hospital and commemorate the practice of earlier days.

 

KOREA

In Korea, royalty and aristocrats were carried in wooden litters called gama. Gamas were primarily used by royalty and government officials. There were six types of gama, each assigned to different government official rankings. In traditional weddings, the bride and groom are carried to the ceremony in separate gamas. Because of the difficulties posed by the mountainous terrain of the Korean peninsula and the lack of paved roads, gamas were preferred over wheeled vehicles.

 

JAPAN

As the population of Japan increased, less and less land was available as grazing for the upkeep of horses. With the availability of horses restricted to martial uses, human powered transport became more important and prevalent.

 

Kago (Kanji: 駕籠, Hiragana: かご) were often used in Japan to transport the non-samurai citizen. Norimono were used by the warrior class and nobility, most famously during the Tokugawa period when regional samurai were required to spend a part of the year in Edo (Tokyo) with their families, resulting in yearly migrations of the rich and powerful (Sankin-kōtai) to and from the capital along the central backbone road of Japan.

 

Somewhat similar in appearance to kago are the portable shrines that are used to carry the "god-body" (goshintai), the central totemic core normally found in the most sacred area of Shinto Shrines, on a tour to and from a shrine during some religious festivals.

 

THAILAND

In Thailand, the royalty were also carried in wooden litters called wo ("พระวอ" Phra Wo, literally, "Royal Sedan") for large ceremonies. Wos were elaborately decorated litters that were delicately carved and colored by gold leaves. Stained glass is also used to decorate the litters. Presently, Royal Wos and carriages are only used for royal ceremonies in Thailand. They are exhibited in the Bangkok National Museum.

 

INDONESIA

In traditional Javanese society, the generic palanquin or joli was a wicker chair with a canopy, attached to two poles, and borne on men's shoulders, and was available for hire to any paying customer. As a status marker, gilded throne-like palanquins, or jempana, were originally reserved solely for royalty, and later co-opted by the Dutch, as a status marker: the more elaborate the palanquin, the higher the status of the owner. The joli was transported either by hired help, by nobles' peasants, or by slaves.

 

Historically, the palanquin of a Javanese king (raja), prince (pangeran), lord (raden mas) or other noble (bangsawan) was known as a jempana; a more throne-like version was called a pangkem. It was always part of a large military procession, with a yellow (the Javanese colour for royalty) square canopy. The ceremonial parasol (payung) was held above the palanquin, which was carried by a bearer behind and flanked by the most loyal bodyguards, usually about 12 men, with pikes, sabres, lances, muskets, keris and a variety of disguised blades. In contrast, the canopy of the Sumatran palanquin was oval-shaped and draped in white cloth; this was reflective of greater cultural permeation by Islam. Occasionally, a weapon or heirloom, such as an important keris or tombak, was given its own palanquin. In Hindu culture in Bali today, the tradition of using palanquins for auspicious statues, weapons or heirlooms continues, for funerals especially; in more elaborate rituals, a palanquin is used to bear the body, and is subsequently cremated along with the departed.

 

INDIA

A palanquin, also known as palkhi, is a covered sedan chair (or litter) carried on four poles. It derives from the Sanskrit word for a bed or couch, pa:lanka.

 

Palanquins are mentioned in literature as early as the Ramayana (c. 250BC).

 

Palanquins began to fall out of use after rickshaws (on wheels, more practical) were introduced in the 1930s.

 

The doli (also transliterated from Hindi as dhooly or dhoolie) is a cot or frame, suspended by the four corners from a bamboo pole. Two or four men would carry it. In the time of the British in India, dhooly-bearers were used to carry the wounded from the battlefield and transport them.

 

Today in numerous areas of India including at the Hindu pilgrimage site of Amarnath Temple in Kashmir, palanquins can be hired to carry the customer up steep hills.

 

IN AFRICA

GHANA

In Southern Ghana the Akan and the Ga-Dangme carry their chiefs and kings in palanquins when they appear in their state durbars. When used in such occasions these palanquins may be seen as a substitutes of a state coach in Europe or a horse used in Northern Ghana. The chiefs of the Ga (mantsemei) in the Greater Accra Region (Ghana) use also figurative palanquins which are built after a chief's family symbol or totem. But these day the figurative palanquins are very seldom used. They are related with the figurative coffins which have become very popular among the Ga in the last 50 years. Since these figurative coffins were shown 1989 in the exhibition "Les magicians de la terre" in the Centre Pompidou in Paris they were shown in many art museums around the world.

 

ANGOLA

From at least the 15th century until the 19th century, litters of varying types known as tipoye were used in the Kingdom of Kongo as a mode of transportation for the elites. Seat-style litters with a single pole along the back of the chair carried by two men (usually slaves) were topped with an umbrella. Lounge-style litters in the shape of a bed were used to move one to two people with porter at each corner. Due to the tropical climate, horse were not native to the area nor could they survive very ong once introduced by the Portuguese. Human portage was the only mode of transportation in the region and became highly adept with missionary accounts claiming the litter transporters could move at speeds 'as fast as post horses at the gallop'.

 

IN THE WEST

EUROPE

Portuguese and Spanish navigators and colonistics encountered litters of various sorts in India, Mexico, and Peru. They were imported into Spain and spread into France and then Britain. All the names for these devices are ultimately derived from the root sed- in Latin sedere, "sit," which gave rise to seda ("seat") and its diminutive sedula ("little seat"), the latter of which was contracted to sella, the traditional Latin name for a carried chair.The carried chair met instant success in Europe, whose city streets were often a literal mess of mud and refuse: Where cities and towns did not enjoy the presence of sewage systems left over from Imperial Roman days, it was common to empty chamber pots and discard kitchen refuse from windows down into the adjacent streets. Affluent and well-to-do citizens often found it hazardous and impractical to negotiate those avenues, and sedan chairs allowed them to remain prim and spotless while the carrying valets had to contend with the mud and the filth.In Europe, Henry VIII of England was carried around in a sedan chair — it took four strong chairmen to carry him towards the end of his life — but the expression "sedan chair" was not used in print until 1615. It does not seem to take its name from the city of Sedan. Trevor Fawcett notes (see link) that British travellers Fynes Moryson (in 1594) and John Evelyn (in 1644-5) remarked on the seggioli of Naples and Genoa, which were chairs for public hire slung from poles and carried on the shoulders of two porters.From the mid-17th century, visitors taking the waters at Bath would be conveyed in a chair enclosed in baize curtains, especially if they had taken a heated bath and were going straight to bed to sweat. The curtains kept off a possibly fatal draft. These were not the proper sedan chairs "to carry the better sort of people in visits, or if sick or infirmed" (Celia Fiennes). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the chairs stood in the main hall of a well-appointed city residence, where a lady could enter and be carried to her destination without setting foot in a filthy street. The neoclassical sedan chair made for Queen Charlotte remains at Buckingham Palace.

 

By the mid-17th century, sedans for hire were a common mode of transportation. In London, "chairs" were available for hire in 1634, each assigned a number and the chairmen licensed because the operation was a monopoly of a courtier of Charles I. Sedan chairs could pass in streets too narrow for a carriage and were meant to alleviate the crush of coaches in London streets, an early instance of traffic congestion. A similar system was later used in Scotland. In 1738, a fare system was established for Scottish sedans, and the regulations covering chairmen in Bath are reminiscent of the modern Taxi Commission's rules. A trip within a city cost six pence and a day's rental was four shillings. A sedan was even used as an ambulance in Scotland's Royal Infirmary.

 

Chairmen moved at a good clip. In Bath they had the right-of-way and pedestrians hearing "By your leave" behind them knew to flatten themselves against walls or railings as the chairmen hustled through. There were often disastrous accidents, upset chairs, and broken glass-paned windows.

 

Sedan chairs were also used by the wealthy in the cities of colonial America. Benjamin Franklin used a sedan chair late in the 18th century.

 

COLONIAL PRACTICE

In various colonies, litters of various types were maintained under native traditions, but often adopted by the white colonials as a new ruling and/or socio-economic elite, either for practical reasons (often comfortable modern transport was unavailable, e.g. for lack of decent roads) and/or as a status symbol. During the 17-18th centuries, palanquins (see above) were very popular among European traders in Bengal, so much so that in 1758 an order was issued prohibiting their purchase by certain lower-ranking employees.

 

THE END OF A TRADITION

In Great Britain, in the early 19th century, the public sedan chair began to fall out of use, perhaps because streets were better paved or perhaps because of the rise of the more comfortable, companionable and affordable hackney carriage. In Glasgow, the decline of the sedan chair is illustrated by licensing records which show twenty-seven sedan chairs in 1800, eighteen in 1817, and ten in 1828. During that same period the number of registered hackney carriages in Glasgow rose to one hundred and fifty.

 

THE TRAVELING SILLA OF LATIN AMERICA

A similar but simpler palanquin was used by the elite in parts of 18th- and 19th-century Latin America. Often simply called a silla (Spanish for seat or chair), it consisted of a simple wooden chair with an attached tumpline. The occupant sat in the chair, which was then affixed to the back of a single porter, with the tumpline supported by his head. The occupant thus faced backwards during travel. This style of palanquin was probably due to the steep terrain and rough or narrow roads unsuitable to European-style sedan chairs. Travellers by silla usually employed a number of porters, who would alternate carrying the occupant.

 

A chair borne on the back of a porter, almost identical to the silla, is used in the mountains of China for ferrying older tourists and visitors up and down the mountain paths. One of these mountains where the silla is still used is the Huangshan Mountains of Anhui province in Eastern China.

 

WIKIPEDIA

  

Example of asbestos magnesia material, shown as pre-formed, fibrous block insulation with original manufacturer's label.

examples of core work assignments

can be used in any digital media or online graphics

Example of a large, partially insulated pipe valve; demonstrating fiberglass-packed insulation covered with a thick layer of asbestos "mud" insulation that has been cut in half. The damaged pipe valve insulation reveals a "cut-away" perspective of the isulation's makeup, which was probably cut in this manner to repair a section of the pipe adjacent to the valve and re-stuffed with extra fiberglass batt insulation.

TheDiet Chronicles Documents an example of healthy eating or rather mindful eating. An idea of a way one "could" eat as a means to eat healthy and enjoy the process. As black belts and martial artist we are aware that Heart Disease is the number one cause of death among Americans and 1 out of 3 people will develop Type 2 Diabetes. It only makes sense then to make Healthy Eating a part of any self-defense program. Statistics show more people will be hurt by what's on their plate than they ever will be by a punch, kick, throw, or grappling match. Learning martial art techniques is important but where it stops the self-discipline of eating healthy and mindfully begins. Just an idea we explore and one that I ask my students to explore as well.

 

A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org

 

Visit our website www.thedojo.org

 

Children Learn Focus, Discipline, Self-Control, Concentration, Fitness, Confidence, Respect, Have Better Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating and Self-Defense.

 

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Parents, Download your FREE Report The 7 Steps for Parents: Preventing Childhood Sexual Abuse Click HERE to visit our website

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Get more information about our Martial Arts Education of Intelligent Curriculum involving Everything Self-Defense at TheDOJO located in Rutherford NJ.

Contact Chief Instructor: Owner Sensei Dan Rominski at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org

Visit our website www.TheDOJO.org

 

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We Teach Children, Teens and Adults from Rutherford, NJ; East Rutherford, NJ; Carlstadt, NJ; Kearny, NJ; Lyndhurst, NJ; Woodridge, NJ; Hackensack, NJ; Belleville, NJ; Bloomfield, NJ; Nutley, NJ; Clifton, NJ; Montclair, NJ; and surrounding areas.

 

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The Ajanta Caves (Ajiṇṭhā leni; Marathi: अजिंठा लेणी) in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE. The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as "the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting", which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales. The caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BCE, with the second group of caves built around 400–650 CE according to older accounts, or all in a brief period of 460 to 480 according to the recent proposals of Walter M. Spink. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The caves are located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, near Jalgaon and just outside the village of Ajinṭhā 20°31′56″N 75°44′44″E), about 59 kilometres from Jalgaon railway station on the Delhi – Mumbai line and Howrah-Nagpur-Mumbai line of the Central Railway zone, and 104 kilometres from the city of Aurangabad. They are 100 kilometres from the Ellora Caves, which contain Hindu and Jain temples as well as Buddhist caves, the last dating from a period similar to Ajanta. The Ajanta caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur, and although they are now along and above a modern pathway running across the cliff they were originally reached by individual stairs or ladders from the side of the river 35 to 110 feet below.

 

The area was previously heavily forested, and after the site ceased to be used the caves were covered by jungle until accidentally rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer on a hunting party. They are Buddhist monastic buildings, apparently representing a number of distinct "monasteries" or colleges. The caves are numbered 1 to 28 according to their place along the path, beginning at the entrance. Several are unfinished and some barely begun and others are small shrines, included in the traditional numbering as e.g. "9A"; "Cave 15A" was still hidden under rubble when the numbering was done. Further round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

 

The caves form the largest corpus of early Indian wall-painting; other survivals from the area of modern India are very few, though they are related to 5th-century paintings at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The elaborate architectural carving in many caves is also very rare, and the style of the many figure sculptures is highly local, found only at a few nearby contemporary sites, although the Ajanta tradition can be related to the later Hindu Ellora Caves and other sites.

 

HISTORY

Like the other ancient Buddhist monasteries, Ajanta had a large emphasis on teaching, and was divided into several different caves for living, education and worship, under a central direction. Monks were probably assigned to specific caves for living. The layout reflects this organizational structure, with most of the caves only connected through the exterior. The 7th-century travelling Chinese scholar Xuanzang informs us that Dignaga, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author of well-known books on logic, lived at Ajanta in the 5th century. In its prime the settlement would have accommodated several hundred teachers and pupils. Many monks who had finished their first training may have returned to Ajanta during the monsoon season from an itinerant lifestyle.

 

The caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct periods, separated by several centuries.

 

CAVES OF THE FIRST (SATAVAHANA) PERIOD

The earliest group of caves consists of caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A. According to Walter Spink, they were made during the period 100 BCE to 100 CE, probably under the patronage of the Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE – c. 220 CE) who ruled the region. Other datings prefer the period 300 BCE to 100 BCE, though the grouping of the earlier caves is generally agreed. More early caves may have vanished through later excavations. Of these, caves 9 and 10 are stupa halls of chaitya-griha form, and caves 12, 13, and 15A are vihāras (see the architecture section below for descriptions of these types). The first phase is still often called the Hinayāna phase, as it originated when, using traditional terminology, the Hinayāna or Lesser Vehicle tradition of Buddhism was dominant, when the Buddha was revered symbolically. However the use of the term Hinayana for this period of Buddhism is now deprecated by historians; equally the caves of the second period are now mostly dated too early to be properly called Mahayana, and do not yet show the full expanded cast of supernatural beings characteristic of that phase of Buddhist art. The first Satavahana period caves lacked figurative sculpture, emphasizing the stupa instead, and in the caves of the second period the overwhelming majority of images represent the Buddha alone, or narrative scenes of his lives.

 

Spink believes that some time after the Satavahana period caves were made the site was abandoned for a considerable period until the mid-5th century, probably because the region had turned mainly Hindu

 

CAVES OF THE LATER OR VAKATAKA PERIOD

The second phase began in the 5th century. For a long time it was thought that the later caves were made over a long period from the 4th to the 7th centuries CE, but in recent decades a series of studies by the leading expert on the caves, Walter M. Spink, have argued that most of the work took place over the very brief period from 460 to 480 CE, during the reign of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty. This view has been criticized by some scholars, but is now broadly accepted by most authors of general books on Indian art, for example Huntington and Harle.

 

The second phase is still often called the Mahāyāna or Greater Vehicle phase, but scholars now tend to avoid this nomenclature because of the problems that have surfaced regarding our understanding of Mahāyāna.

 

Some 20 cave temples were simultaneously created, for the most part viharas with a sanctuary at the back. The most elaborate caves were produced in this period, which included some "modernization" of earlier caves. Spink claims that it is possible to establish dating for this period with a very high level of precision; a fuller account of his chronology is given below. Although debate continues, Spink's ideas are increasingly widely accepted, at least in their broad conclusions. The Archaeological Survey of India website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th – 6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". Caves of the second period are 1–8, 11, 14–29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19, 26, and 29 are chaitya-grihas, the rest viharas.

 

According to Spink, the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually abandoned and forgotten. During the intervening centuries, the jungle grew back and the caves were hidden, unvisited and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them.

 

REDISCOVERY

On 28 April 1819, a British officer for the Madras Presidency, John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tiger, accidentally discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 deep within the tangled undergrowth. There were local people already using the caves for prayers with a small fire, when he arrived. Exploring that first cave, long since a home to nothing more than birds and bats and a lair for other larger animals, Captain Smith vandalized the wall by scratching his name and the date, April 1819. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822. Within a few decades, the caves became famous for their exotic setting, impressive architecture, and above all their exceptional, all but unique paintings. A number of large projects to copy the paintings were made in the century after rediscovery, covered below. In 1848 the Royal Asiatic Society established the "Bombay Cave Temple Commission" to clear, tidy and record the most important rock-cut sites in the Bombay Presidency, with John Wilson, as president. In 1861 this became the nucleus of the new Archaeological Survey of India. Until the Nizam of Hyderabad built the modern path between the caves, among other efforts to make the site easy to visit, a trip to Ajanta was a considerable adventure, and contemporary accounts dwell with relish on the dangers from falls off narrow ledges, animals and the Bhil people, who were armed with bows and arrows and had a fearsome reputation.

 

Today, fairly easily combined with Ellora in a single trip, the caves are the most popular tourist destination in Mahrashtra, and are often crowded at holiday times, increasing the threat to the caves, especially the paintings. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation announced plans to add to the ASI visitor centre at the entrance complete replicas of caves 1, 2, 16 & 17 to reduce crowding in the originals, and enable visitors to receive a better visual idea of the paintings, which are dimly-lit and hard to read in the caves. Figures for the year to March 2010 showed a total of 390,000 visitors to the site, divided into 362,000 domestic and 27,000 foreign. The trends over the previous few years show a considerable growth in domestic visitors, but a decline in foreign ones; the year to 2010 was the first in which foreign visitors to Ellora exceeded those to Ajanta.

 

PAINTINGS

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 9 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of court-led painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painter had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars".

 

Four of the later caves have large and relatively well-preserved mural paintings which "have come to represent Indian mural painting to the non-specialist", and fall into two stylistic groups, with the most famous in Caves 16 and 17, and apparently later paintings in Caves 1 and 2. The latter group were thought to be a century or more later than the others, but the revised chronology proposed by Spink would place them much closer to the earlier group, perhaps contemporary with it in a more progressive style, or one reflecting a team from a different region. The paintings are in "dry fresco", painted on top of a dry plaster surface rather than into wet plaster.

 

All the paintings appear to be the work of painters at least as used to decorating palaces as temples, and show a familiarity with and interest in details of the life of a wealthy court. We know from literary sources that painting was widely practised and appreciated in the courts of the Gupta period. Unlike much Indian painting, compositions are not laid out in horizontal compartments like a frieze, but show large scenes spreading in all directions from a single figure or group at the centre. The ceilings are also painted with sophisticated and elaborate decorative motifs, many derived from sculpture. The paintings in cave 1, which according to Spink was commissioned by Harisena himself, concentrate on those Jataka tales which show previous lives of the Buddha as a king, rather than as an animal or human commoner, and so show settings from contemporary palace life.

 

In general the later caves seem to have been painted on finished areas as excavating work continued elsewhere in the cave, as shown in caves 2 and 16 in particular. According to Spink's account of the chronology of the caves, the abandonment of work in 478 after a brief busy period accounts for the absence of painting in caves such as 4 and 17, the later being plastered in preparation for paintings that were never done.

 

COPIES

The paintings have deteriorated significantly since they were rediscovered, and a number of 19th-century copies and drawings are important for a complete understanding of the works. However, the earliest projects to copy the paintings were plagued by bad fortune. In 1846, Major Robert Gill, an Army officer from Madras presidency and a painter, was appointed by the Royal Asiatic Society to replicate the frescoes on the cave walls to exhibit these paintings in England. Gill worked on his painting at the site from 1844 to 1863 (though he continued to be based there until his death in 1875, writing books and photographing) and made 27 copies of large sections of murals, but all but four were destroyed in a fire at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866, where they were on display.

 

Another attempt was made in 1872 when the Bombay Presidency commissioned John Griffiths, then principal of the Bombay School of Art, to work with his students to make new copies, again for shipping to England. They worked on this for thirteen years and some 300 canvases were produced, many of which were displayed at the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road in London, one of the forerunners of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But in 1885 another fire destroyed over a hundred paintings that were in storage. The V&A still has 166 paintings surviving from both sets, though none have been on permanent display since 1955. The largest are some 3 × 6 metres. A conservation project was undertaken on about half of them in 2006, also involving the University of Northumbria. Griffith and his students had unfortunately painted many of the paintings with "cheap varnish" in order to make them easier to see, which has added to the deterioration of the originals, as has, according to Spink and others, recent cleaning by the ASI.

 

A further set of copies were made between 1909 and 1911 by Christiana Herringham (Lady Herringham) and a group of students from the Calcutta School of Art that included the future Indian Modernist painter Nandalal Bose. The copies were published in full colour as the first publication of London's fledgling India Society. More than the earlier copies, these aimed to fill in holes and damage to recreate the original condition rather than record the state of the paintings as she was seeing them. According to one writer, unlike the paintings created by her predecessors Griffiths and Gill, whose copies were influenced by British Victorian styles of painting, those of the Herringham expedition preferred an 'Indian Renascence' aesthetic of the type pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore.

 

Early photographic surveys were made by Robert Gill, who learnt to use a camera from about 1856, and whose photos, including some using stereoscopy, were used in books by him and Fergusson (many are available online from the British Library), then Victor Goloubew in 1911 and E.L. Vassey, who took the photos in the four volume study of the caves by Ghulam Yazdani (published 1930–1955).

 

ARCHITECTURE

The monasteries mostly consist of vihara halls for prayer and living, which are typically rectangular with small square dormitory cells cut into the walls, and by the second period a shrine or sanctuary at the rear centred on a large statue of the Buddha, also carved from the living rock. This change reflects the movement from Hinayana to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other type of main hall is the narrower and higher chaitya hall with a stupa as the focus at the far end, and a narrow aisle around the walls, behind a range of pillars placed close together. Other plainer rooms were for sleeping and other activities. Some of the caves have elaborate carved entrances, some with large windows over the door to admit light. There is often a colonnaded porch or verandah, with another space inside the doors running the width of the cave.

 

The central square space of the interior of the viharas is defined by square columns forming a more or less square open area. Outside this are long rectangular aisles on each side, forming a kind of cloister. Along the side and rear walls are a number of small cells entered by a narrow doorway; these are roughly square, and have small niches on their back walls. Originally they had wooden doors. The centre of the rear wall has a larger shrine-room behind, containing a large Buddha statue. The viharas of the earlier period are much simpler, and lack shrines. Spink in fact places the change to a design with a shrine to the middle of the second period, with many caves being adapted to add a shrine in mid-excavation, or after the original phase.

 

The plan of Cave 1 shows one of the largest viharas, but is fairly typical of the later group. Many others, such as Cave 16, lack the vestibule to the shrine, which leads straight off the main hall. Cave 6 is two viharas, one above the other, connected by internal stairs, with sanctuaries on both levels.

 

The four completed chaitya halls are caves 9 and 10 from the early period, and caves 19 and 26 from the later period of construction. All follow the typical form found elsewhere, with high ceilings and a central "nave" leading to the stupa, which is near the back, but allows walking behind it, as walking around stupas was (and remains) a common element of Buddhist worship (pradakshina). The later two have high ribbed roofs, which reflect timber forms, and the earlier two are thought to have used actual timber ribs, which have now perished. The two later halls have a rather unusual arrangement (also found in Cave 10 at Ellora) where the stupa is fronted by a large relief sculpture of the Buddha, standing in Cave 19 and seated in Cave 26. Cave 29 is a late and very incomplete chaitya hall.

 

The form of columns in the work of the first period is very plain and un-embellished, with both chaitya halls using simple octagonal columns, which were painted with figures. In the second period columns were far more varied and inventive, often changing profile over their height, and with elaborate carved capitals, often spreading wide. Many columns are carved over all their surface, some fluted and others carved with decoration all over, as in cave 1.

 

The flood basalt rock of the cliff, part of the Deccan Traps formed by successive volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous, is layered horizontally, and somewhat variable in quality, so the excavators had to amend their plans in places, and in places there have been collapses in the intervening centuries, as with the lost portico to cave 1. Excavation began by cutting a narrow tunnel at roof level, which was expanded downwards and outwards; the half-built vihara cave 24 shows the method. Spink believes that for the first caves of the second period the excavators had to relearn skills and techniques that had been lost in the centuries since the first period, which were then transmitted to be used at later rock-cut sites in the region, such as Ellora, and the Elephanta, Bagh, Badami and Aurangabad Caves.

 

The caves from the first period seem to have been paid for by a number of different patrons, with several inscriptions recording the donation of particular portions of a single cave, but according to Spink the later caves were each commissioned as a complete unit by a single patron from the local rulers or their court elites. After the death of Harisena smaller donors got their chance to add small "shrinelets" between the caves or add statues to existing caves, and some two hundred of these "intrusive" additions were made in sculpture, with a further number of intrusive paintings, up to three hundred in cave 10 alone.

 

A grand gateway to the site, at the apex of the gorge's horsehoe between caves 15 and 16, was approached from the river, and is decorated with elephants on either side and a nāga, or protective snake deity.

 

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CAVES

In the pre-Christian era, the Buddha was represented symbolically, in the form of the stupa. Thus, halls were made with stupas to venerate the Buddha. In later periods the images of the Buddha started to be made in coins, relic caskets, relief or loose sculptural forms, etc. However, it took a while for the human representation of the Buddha to appear in Buddhist art. One of the earliest evidences of the Buddha's human representations are found at Buddhist archaeological sites, such as Goli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati. The monasteries of those sites were built in less durable media, such as wood, brick, and stone. As far as the genre of rock-cut architecture is concerned it took many centuries for the Buddha image to be depicted. Nobody knows for sure at which rock-cut cave site the first image of the Buddha was depicted. Current research indicates that Buddha images in a portable form, made of wood or stone, were introduced, for the first time, at Kanheri, to be followed soon at Ajanta Cave 8 (Dhavalikar, Jadhav, Spink, Singh). While the Kanheri example dates to 4th or 5th century CE, the Ajanta example has been dated to c. 462–478 CE (Spink). None of the rock-cut monasteries prior to these dates, and other than these examples, show any Buddha image although hundreds of rock-cut caves were made throughout India during the first few centuries CE. And, in those caves, it is the stupa that is the object of veneration, not the image. Images of the Buddha are not found in Buddhist sailagrhas (rock-cut complexes) until the times of the Kanheri (4th–5th century CE) and Ajanta examples (c. 462–478 CE).

 

The caves of the second period, now all dated to the 5th century, were typically described as "Mahayana", but do not show the features associated with later Mahayana Buddhism. Although the beginnings of Mahāyāna teachings go back to the 1st century there is little art and archaeological evidence to suggest that it became a mainstream cult for several centuries. In Mahayana it is not Gautama Buddha but the Bodhisattva who is important, including "deity" Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Tara, as well as aspects of the Buddha such as Aksobhya, and Amitabha. Except for a few Bodhisattva, these are not depicted at Ajanta, where the Buddha remains the dominant figure. Even the Bodhisattva images of Ajanta are never central objects of worship, but are always shown as attendants of the Buddha in the shrine. If a Bodhisattva is shown in isolation, as in the Astabhaya scenes, these were done in the very last years of activities at Ajanta, and are mostly 'intrusive' in nature, meaning that they were not planned by the original patrons, and were added by new donors after the original patrons had suddenly abandoned the region in the wake of Emperor Harisena's death.

 

The contrast between iconic and aniconic representations, that is, the stupa on one hand and the image of the Buddha on the other, is now being seen as a construct of the modern scholar rather than a reality of the past. The second phase of Ajanta shows that the stupa and image coincided together. If the entire corpus of the art of Ajanta including sculpture, iconography, architecture, epigraphy, and painting are analysed afresh it will become clear that there was no duality between the symbolic and human forms of the Buddha, as far as the 5th-century phase of Ajanta is concerned. That is why most current scholars tend to avoid the terms 'Hinayana' and 'Mahayana' in the context of Ajanta. They now prefer to call the second phase by the ruling dynasty, as the Vākāţaka phase.

 

CAVES

CAVE 1

Cave 1 was built on the eastern end of the horse-shoe shaped scarp, and is now the first cave the visitor encounters. This would when first made have been a less prominent position, right at the end of the row. According to Spink, it is one of the latest caves to have been excavated, when the best sites had been taken, and was never fully inaugurated for worship by the dedication of the Buddha image in the central shrine. This is shown by the absence of sooty deposits from butter lamps on the base of the shrine image, and the lack of damage to the paintings that would have been happened if the garland-hooks around the shrine had been in use for any period of time. Although there is no epigraphic evidence, Spink believes that the Vākāţaka Emperor Harishena was the benefactor of the work, and this is reflected in the emphasis on imagery of royalty in the cave, with those Jakata tales being selected that tell of those previous lives of the Buddha in which he was royal.

 

The cliff has a more steep slope here than at other caves, so to achieve a tall grand facade it was necessary to cut far back into the slope, giving a large courtyard in front of the facade. There was originally a columned portico in front of the present facade, which can be seen "half-intact in the 1880s" in pictures of the site, but this fell down completely and the remains, despite containing fine carving, were carelessly thrown down the slope into the river, from where they have been lost, presumably carried away in monsoon torrents.

 

This cave has one of the most elaborate carved façades, with relief sculptures on entablature and ridges, and most surfaces embellished with decorative carving. There are scenes carved from the life of the Buddha as well as a number of decorative motifs. A two pillared portico, visible in the 19th-century photographs, has since perished. The cave has a front-court with cells fronted by pillared vestibules on either side. These have a high plinth level. The cave has a porch with simple cells on both ends. The absence of pillared vestibules on the ends suggest that the porch was not excavated in the latest phase of Ajanta when pillared vestibules had become a necessity and norm. Most areas of the porch were once covered with murals, of which many fragments remain, especially on the ceiling. There are three doorways: a central doorway and two side doorways. Two square windows were carved between the doorways to brighten the interiors.

 

Each wall of the hall inside is nearly 12 m long and 6.1 m high. Twelve pillars make a square colonnade inside supporting the ceiling, and creating spacious aisles along the walls. There is a shrine carved on the rear wall to house an impressive seated image of the Buddha, his hands being in the dharmachakrapravartana mudra. There are four cells on each of the left, rear, and the right walls, though due to rock fault there are none at the ends of the rear aisle. The walls are covered with paintings in a fair state of preservation, though the full scheme was never completed. The scenes depicted are mostly didactic, devotional, and ornamental, with scenes from the Jataka stories of the Buddha's former existences as a bodhisattva), the life of the Gautama Buddha, and those of his veneration. The two most famous individual painted images at Ajanta are the two over-life size figures of the protective bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani on either side of the entrance to the Buddha shrine on the wall of the rear aisle (see illustrations above). According to Spink, the original dating of the paintings to about 625 arose largely or entirely because James Fegusson, a 19th-century architectural historian, had decided that a scene showing an ambassador being received, with figures in Persian dress, represented a recorded embassy to Persia (from a Hindu monarch at that) around that date.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, adjacent to Cave 1, is known for the paintings that have been preserved on its walls, ceilings, and pillars. It looks similar to Cave 1 and is in a better state of preservation.

 

Cave 2 has a porch quite different from Cave one. Even the façade carvings seem to be different. The cave is supported by robust pillars, ornamented with designs. The front porch consists of cells supported by pillared vestibules on both ends. The cells on the previously "wasted areas" were needed to meet the greater housing requirements in later years. Porch-end cells became a trend in all later Vakataka excavations. The simple single cells on porch-ends were converted into CPVs or were planned to provide more room, symmetry, and beauty.

 

The paintings on the ceilings and walls of this porch have been widely published. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences as Bodhisattva. Just as the stories illustrated in cave 1 emphasize kingship, those in cave 2 show many "noble and powerful" women in prominent roles, leading to suggestions that the patron was an unknown woman. The porch's rear wall has a doorway in the center, which allows entrance to the hall. On either side of the door is a square-shaped window to brighten the interior.

 

The hall has four colonnades which are supporting the ceiling and surrounding a square in the center of the hall. Each arm or colonnade of the square is parallel to the respective walls of the hall, making an aisle in between. The colonnades have rock-beams above and below them. The capitals are carved and painted with various decorative themes that include ornamental, human, animal, vegetative, and semi-divine forms.

 

Paintings appear on almost every surface of the cave except for the floor. At various places the art work has become eroded due to decay and human interference. Therefore, many areas of the painted walls, ceilings, and pillars are fragmentary. The painted narratives of the Jataka tales are depicted only on the walls, which demanded the special attention of the devotee. They are didactic in nature, meant to inform the community about the Buddha's teachings and life through successive rebirths. Their placement on the walls required the devotee to walk through the aisles and 'read' the narratives depicted in various episodes. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research since the site's rediscovery in 1819. Dieter Schlingloff's identifications have updated our knowledge on the subject.

 

CAVE 4

The Archeological Survey of India board outside the caves gives the following detail about cave 4: "This is the largest monastery planned on a grandiose scale but was never finished. An inscription on the pedestal of the buddha's image mentions that it was a gift from a person named Mathura and paleographically belongs to 6th century A.D. It consists of a verandah, a hypostylar hall, sanctum with an antechamber and a series of unfinished cells. The rear wall of the verandah contains the panel of Litany of Avalokiteśvara".

 

The sanctuary houses a colossal image of the Buddha in preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas and celestial nymphs hovering above.

 

CAVES 9-10

Caves 9 and 10 are the two chaitya halls from the first period of construction, though both were also undergoing an uncompleted reworking at the end of the second period. Cave 10 was perhaps originally of the 1st century BCE, and cave 9 about a hundred years later. The small "shrinelets" called caves 9A to 9D and 10A also date from the second period, and were commissioned by individuals.

 

The paintings in cave 10 include some surviving from the early period, many from an incomplete programme of modernization in the second period, and a very large number of smaller late intrusive images, nearly all Buddhas and many with donor inscriptions from individuals. These mostly avoided over-painting the "official" programme and after the best positions were used up are tucked away in less prominent positions not yet painted; the total of these (including those now lost) was probably over 300, and the hands of many different artists are visible.

 

OTHER CAVES

Cave 3 is merely a start of an excavation; according to Spink it was begun right at the end of the final period of work and soon abandoned. Caves 5 and 6 are viharas, the latter on two floors, that were late works of which only the lower floor of cave 6 was ever finished. The upper floor of cave 6 has many private votive sculptures, and a shrine Buddha, but is otherwise unfinished. Cave 7 has a grand facade with two porticos but, perhaps because of faults in the rock, which posed problems in many caves, was never taken very deep into the cliff, and consists only of the two porticos and a shrine room with antechamber, with no central hall. Some cells were fitted in.

 

Cave 8 was long thought to date to the first period of construction, but Spink sees it as perhaps the earliest cave from the second period, its shrine an "afterthought". The statue may have been loose rather than carved from the living rock, as it has now vanished. The cave was painted, but only traces remain.

 

SPINK´S DETAILED CHRONOLOGY

Walter M. Spink has over recent decades developed a very precise and circumstantial chronology for the second period of work on the site, which unlike earlier scholars, he places entirely in the 5th century. This is based on evidence such as the inscriptions and artistic style, combined with the many uncompleted elements of the caves. He believes the earlier group of caves, which like other scholars he dates only approximately, to the period "between 100 BCE – 100 CE", were at some later point completely abandoned and remained so "for over three centuries", as the local population had turned mainly Hindu. This changed with the accession of the Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka Dynasty, who reigned from 460 to his death in 477. Harisena extended the Central Indian Vakataka Empire to include a stretch of the east coast of India; the Gupta Empire ruled northern India at the same period, and the Pallava dynasty much of the south.

 

According to Spink, Harisena encouraged a group of associates, including his prime minister Varahadeva and Upendragupta, the sub-king in whose territory Ajanta was, to dig out new caves, which were individually commissioned, some containing inscriptions recording the donation. This activity began in 462 but was mostly suspended in 468 because of threats from the neighbouring Asmaka kings. Work continued on only caves 1, Harisena's own commission, and 17–20, commissioned by Upendragupta. In 472 the situation was such that work was suspended completely, in a period that Spink calls "the Hiatus", which lasted until about 475, by which time the Asmakas had replaced Upendragupta as the local rulers.

 

Work was then resumed, but again disrupted by Harisena's death in 477, soon after which major excavation ceased, except at cave 26, which the Asmakas were sponsoring themselves. The Asmakas launched a revolt against Harisena's son, which brought about the end of the Vakataka Dynasty. In the years 478–480 major excavation by important patrons was replaced by a rash of "intrusions" – statues added to existing caves, and small shrines dotted about where there was space between them. These were commissioned by less powerful individuals, some monks, who had not previously been able to make additions to the large excavations of the rulers and courtiers. They were added to the facades, the return sides of the entrances, and to walls inside the caves. According to Spink, "After 480, not a single image was ever made again at the site", and as Hinduism again dominated the region, the site was again abandoned, this time for over a millennium.

 

Spink does not use "circa" in his dates, but says that "one should allow a margin of error of one year or perhaps even two in all cases".

 

IMPACT ON MODERN INDIAN PAINTINGS

The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka.

 

The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists examples from ancient India to follow. Nandlal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.

 

WIKIPEDIA

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Examples of photography from ShootingHip wedding photography at the Tithe Barn Hampshire. Copyright ShootingHip all rights reserved. Visit: www.shootinghip.com

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The soldiers

This is a cold night, you can hear every single noise of the dark.

3 people hiding in the corner of a house that is not so far away from the fighting , you can hear the bombs and machine guns that answer to each other endlessly.

One of the soldier felt a hot fluid between his knees and looked at his enemy:

-Are you bleeding?

-Yes, one of your men has shot me but not too serious.

-Why are you here? asked the injured man.

-I saw an advertisement in the Post Office window , if you enjoy the army and you go to fight only for 3 months you can make easily 100 thousand pounds, and if you continue to work for them at quite an early age you can be retired and can get a good pension. I thought this is an easy way to make my life comfortable, only 3 months and I have enough money to buy a house and I don't need to struggle anymore with what's happening later. So I went and registered in the army and at the end of the day I found myself here.

-And you?

-I haven't got a choice, if I'm not going they shoot me. In the beginning I was proud to defend my country, but then.......I haven't got a choice - do you understand me?

-Yes, said the injured man.....

About five minutes of sharp silence that was only broken by the noises of fighting that was happening nearby.

-Why are you here? even though you haven't got an uniform.

-My family live in this house where we are now , I fight because I want safety for my wife and my two children, help them to be able to escape from the soldiers. They find me and follow me so they can run away unnoticed, then one of your colleagues shot me by the lake. He thought I fell into the water so left me behind and went back where he come from.

Again 5 minutes of sharp silence that was only broken by a big bang and every dream, aim and reason broke into several pieces.

   

The Soldier

We can describe human history as a history of the wars of ideas, interest and power. Why are wars happening in the world? There are a lot of concepts which try to explain the reason for human aggression. Some people think that it is the nature whoever is the strongest will survive. They call this phenomena natural selection. It can appear to humans as an awful thing when the tiger eats the weakest animal in pack or herd. In reality this increases the herd's survival possibilities because will the strongest survive and reproduce the best offspring. Religious concepts say that aggression is a kind of sickness that needs to be healed. The first example in the human beings history when the sickness was documented is story of Cain and Abel.

I do not believe that natural selection is exists because any disaster can destroy the best pieces in the herd. The war is threatening the human existence therefore similar to a sickness or a negative deformation. My pictures is illustrate how meaningless every war and any reason for a fight ending with no future for anyone. It's not important if you are right or wrong , the way is the same for everyone, poor darkness and silence of the death. The plastic soldiers create the feeling of how cheap is human life by (own) measure of humanity. We do not appreciate the gift of the universe, we and other living being exist because we are measure as a sum of money. We show to our generation the war as a game and the human being as a disaster because we are accepting and explaining all bad that is happening around us. We are the plastic soldiers because we fighting and killing each other and don't value ours and other people lives. Human being history shows us that by our way of thinking and understanding the reality is repeatedly becaming a blood shower.

Don MCCullin is a famous war photographer who has travelled all around the word and captured the horrible moment of the bloodshed. The first time he was excuted to be famous and it gave him inspiration to continue this Job. He went to Vietnam and saw the most bloody war and that event changed his life forever. He saw Nepal bombs and watched how people body exploded and hundreds of them were injured. He became psychically and mentally sick as did most of the soldiers who were in there, the name of the sickness is combat stress.

"I thought, you know, it (the shower) could cleanse the filth of war off me. It didn't, really, because by then it had all gotten into my brain."

"I was sleeping next to bodies and things (in Hue)... and then you say, 'What the hell's this got to do with photography?' 'Who am I?' 'Where the hell have I just been?' 'What's happened to me?'"

He never fully recovered from the physical damaged that he suffered during the time he spent in Vietnam. He paid a big price to be famous because he lost forever the peace in his soul and never found answers as to why people do such terrible things to each other.

After he started doing landscape and different subject and in a point in his life started demand to show his war photography for public to be forgotten forever the past, nothing remember him for that terrible experience. He was very proud about his work ethic and the person who he captured was important to him therefore he try to be gentle and do not show things that can be disgusting for the subject.

He showed through his work, how important each life that we lost during the war and no one recognized it. He tired make people aware about how horrible is the war so never happening again. He showed the war to us perspective of the soldier , how they lost their life without any sensible reason and show their pain and suffer. My work shows the war by eyes of the power when the human life doesn't cost anything. The plastic soldiers haven't got emotion, fear, personal values, they only tools for a games and doesn't matter what happening with them.

  

James Natchtwey is a great American war photographer who also captured the Vietnam war. His aim was to show how much insensate the humanity and brutal, to wake up the ignorance people from their dream land by his traumatic documentary photography.

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated. "

-James Nachtwey-

It is a good question, can anyone make a huge impact on people by capture the pure brutal reality? Do those images really encourage people to stop inhuman activities? My opinion if someone saw once socking image it can make a huge impact on that person and can stimulate him/her. If those images became part of their everyday life, it is train them to became ignorance about those fact. If you see for the first time in your life a homeless person, it will shock you but if you saw everyday you became ignorance and detach by emotionally. Therefore it is very important the war photography does not become a style or an easy way to be famous by the subject because the war photography loose own mission and power to make an impact on society.

James Natchwey Afghan war photography is very impressive and some way even surrealistic and symbolic as my present work. The women in the cemetery is the only person who is still alive today and she cuddled a cold stone symbolising her son. This is what's left of those whom she loves. After we saw the same woman walking alone in the street where every building was destroyed. I would like bring to attention the first war photographer who doesn't capture bloody images or moments of war. He illustrated the war inhuman side by documented what was left after the war. This way to express the war is more effective because it troubled me emotionally.

 

w source: BBC

ww.jamesnachtwey.com/

 

Squat toilet

Naval Patrol Vessel HMS Example in Wick harbour 07-04-2018

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example."

John Ruskin

Cave Springs, Sedona, Arizona

An early production Bristol VRTSL, the twentieth built according to chassis number sequence. It was photographed at Bridgwater on Thursday 19th February 1976 ...I think in the parking area adjoining the bus station. Bridgwater advertising on the side, but Torquay on the front, so possibly a recent re-allocation. I always liked white steering wheels, but they became passé, like cream window rubber, and must, I think, have been peculiar to early examples of the VRT. I'm pretty sure there were none in the Bristol Omnibus Co. fleet, but the company was a latecomer to the type.

I had travelled to Taunton by train that morning, then caught a Western National bus to Bridgwater, intending to return by train from there. However, I couldn't find the station. No maps, no signposts ...not a sausage. Being too timid to ask directions of strangers, I retraced my tyre tracks to Taunton and caught a train from there. You'll actually hear people say that shyness is a form of selfishness.

Pythagorean Theorem Example The Pythagorean theorem is related to the study of sides of a right angled triangle. It is also called as pythagoras theorem. The pythagorean theorem states that, In a right triangle, (length of the hypotenuse)2 = {(1st side)2 + (2nd side)2}. In a right angled triangle, there are three sides: hypotenuse, perpendicular and base. The base and the perpendicular make an angle of 90 degree with eachother. So, according to pythagorean theorem.

Me & example :)

An excellent example of the fine commercial and graphic design undertaken by Edward McKnight Kauffer, whose poster works are well known. This advert formed the whole front page of the UK newspaper the Daily Mail in July 1928 and was for the famous "Eno's Fruit Salts" brand. Eno's, like many a patent medicine, advertised heavily - the company was founded by James Crossley Eno (1827 - 1915) and in time was acquired by the equally famous Beecham's company, the descendant company Smith Kline Beecham still produce the stuff. The shipping analogy could be due to Eno's early ploy of giving the salts away to ship's captains from his Newcastle upon Tyne base to help deal with maladies of the sea.

Barbie Statue of Liberty

Book Cover Design - Buchcover kaufen - Ebook Cover - Printcover

buchdesignhaus.de/shop/

examples of split toning process

An example of asbestiform variety anthophyllite mineral ore, shown with fibrous characteristics in natural daylight. This sample exhibits a light tan coloration with some minor associated pale green talc matrix; approx. 18-cm x 5-cm.

 

Asbestiform anthophyllite, an amphibole, is one of only six minerals presently regulated as "asbestos", a classification which consists of five amphiboles and one serpentine asbestiform mineral types.

 

Historically, anthophyllite asbestos was used much less commonly as compared to other types of asbestos minerals, such as chrysotile, crocidolite, or amosite. However, because of its close association with certain talc ore deposits, controversial issues concerning asbestos-contaminated talc have surfaced on occasion. Talc is currently used in a large, growing number of consumer and industrial applications, ranging from materials manufacturing to food preparation to cosmetics and personal hygiene products.

**** THIS IS NOW OBSOLETE FUNCTIONALITY ****

 

screen 2 response opening to last place (or none).

 

Note the scale of the map may vary, (and can be varied to suit, even down to street level, by choosing the '+' and '-' signs).

 

Since the new Flickr Justified view layout, only examples 2 and 3 still apply.

.

Design Service Examples

This is another example of the beautiful waterfalls in Plitvice Lakes National Park, following this one: www.flickr.com/photos/david_morse/6761455033/

 

If I were to post a picture of each waterfall, it would take years, there are so many.

 

Plitvička jezera, or Plitvice Lakes National Park, in Croatia, is a beautiful series of 16 lakes which cascade from one to another through a huge number of waterfalls. Travertine dams separate the lakes, the result of calcium carbonate which is dissolved from the limestone rock and reforms into natural dams that grow about 1cm/year. The dams and waterfalls are constantly moving.

 

The water is crystal clear with a bright blue hue. Really beautiful place.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plitvice_Lakes_National_Park

 

Example of lettering on delivery vans, from a German lettering manual, 1930s

upcoming examples from openFrameworks 0071

Some examples of projects using conductive thread and LEDs. More information at tinkering.exploratorium.edu/sewn-circuits

Some examples of projects using conductive thread and LEDs. More information at tinkering.exploratorium.edu/sewn-circuits

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-61

 

NURSING HOMES: Consumers Could Benefit from Improvements to the Nursing Home Compare Website and Five-Star Quality Rating System

examples of split toning process

example