The Rock-Cut Temples of Maharashtra
Ancient artifacts so exquisite that Will Durant compared
them to the works of Leonardo and Giotto.

by Padma Jayaraj, College Instructor

The world protested in vain over the recent destruction of the centuries-old statues of the Buddha by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It was ironic that men used  sophisticated modern weapons to destroy these ancient artifacts. For these gigantic images, carved deep into the face of a cliff, had silently witnessed changing time and tide, and the writing and rewriting of history. They saw the sparkling life of the Silk Route when it was Central Asia’s main highway for trade and culture before European colonization. They saw the rise and fall of empires that colored and shaded the fortunes and misfortunes of millions of people.

Now they are no longer there! How easy it was to destroy the patient and passionate creations of those unknown artists who had expended their lives and breaths through the centuries for the creation of beauty.

Like the Afghan Buddhas, the Elephanta cave temples of India’s Maharashtra State, now protected by their status as UNESCO World Heritage Monuments, stand as the mute witnesses of human vandalism. Located on an island east of Bombay, the temples are populated with huge legless, trunkless stone statues that remind some visitors of the Venus de Milo. Unschooled in the mythological and the spiritual dimensions of these carvings, which were influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, and insensitive to their physical charm, the Portuguese practiced artillery barrages in these cave temples when Bombay was under their rule. 

Two Intact Temples

But elsewhere in Maharashtra, well inland, the cave temples of Ajantha and Ellora were mercifully protected by silence and neglect as people forgot their very existence until modern times. Created between the 6^th century B.C. and the 2^nd century A.D., these intact temples take you down the corridors of history and give you an almost cinematic angle of perception.

The evolution of architecture and sculpture in India passed through different media, starting with wood and later moving to stone, bronze, and marble. The cave temples show the transition from work on wood to the perfection reached on the medium of stone – in architecture, sculpture, relief and murals. The splendid sculpture and lovely murals that adorn these temples make them one of the glorious monuments of India’s past. They inspired historian Will Durant’s paean in Our Oriental Heritage: “The art of fresco painting on the walls of the caves of Ajantha reached a perfection never excelled even by Giotto or Leonardo.”

To reach Ajantha, you journey 100 miles northeast from the provincial city of Aurangabad (pop. 300,000) until you reach a beautiful ravine – a sweep of curved rock surfaces with paths leading down them to a stream flowing across a valley. You are now at a rock-cut monastery that grew up over the centuries as a complex of man-made caves whose excavation bore testimony to Buddhism’s transformation into a popular religion.

No less than 27 caves, some going 100 feet deep into the rock, were excavated along the horseshoe curve of Ajantha’s hillside. Architecturally, they are a marvel. Today we build skyscrapers starting from a strong base. At Ajantha, imagine a reverse process. These caves were carved out of a mass of monolithic rocks. Beginning from the top, the stonemasons roughly hewed the stone mass into a shape. The sculptors followed them, completing each portion of carved details as the work progressed downwards.

The caves are of two main types: the viharas (monasteries) and chaityas (assembly halls). They are said to be the replicas of the wooden architecture of the time. Cave 10, for example, is a big chaitya, 95 feet long, 42 feet wide and featuring a barrel-shaped roof supported by 39 carved pillars. The viharas are three-storied mansions, comprising a central hall with single monastic cells along three sides, provisioned with stone beds.

Emergence of the Iconic Buddha

The Buddha lived in the 6^th century B.C. The narrative sculpture of his era does not show the his human figure, relying instead on symbols like the bodhi tree (under which he experienced his enlightenment), an empty throne or footprints indicating his recent presence. By the time Ajantha’s construction was underway, popular imagination necessitated a change in the concept of the Buddha from a mere teacher to an eternal and divine being. The Buddha’s human form began to appear, almost as an icon.

Though the monastic tradition still held on to the worship of relics installed within decorated pillars known as stupas, at Ajantha Buddhism’s monastic and popular traditions fused. Along with the imposing structure of a stupa, with its ornamental niches and sculpted image of the Buddha within, there is also an energetic abundance of pillared halls embellished by carved designs, exquisite murals and the image of the Master recessed in the depths of the chambers. Above all this are the monastic cells coaxed from rock. This is rock-cut architecture at its exuberant best.

Floral carvings and exquisitely sculpted female figures adorn the pillars of many caves. But the rock-cut images of the Buddha in the center of the shrine chamber have the most impressive proportions. The light enters through a magnificent, hand-carved, horseshoe-shaped window. The towering figures of the standing Buddha appear to face you, their benign expressions filling you with a feeling of calm.

Here, for the first time in Indian history, murals appear on the walls. It is said that the rough walls of the caves were thinly plastered with a mixture of mud, sand, rice husk and straw. When the first layer dried, another layer of finely smoothed plaster was applied and then was coated with a lime wash.  On the dried walls, painters worked miracles with red and yellow ochre, white from lime, black from lamp-black and green from a mineral rock. Blue was precious because it had to be imported.

Inside the dark caves, the artists worked in the light of oil lamps and the light reflected from outside by metal mirrors. The murals chiefly depict scenes from the life of the Buddha from the Jataka Tales and illustrate the various spiritual perfections of Buddhism. One scene blends into another as the minor figures and the pattern lead your eyes to the central figures of each scene. The paintings display a rare skill in perspective, a mastery over the plastic form and excellence in modeling, with the help of delicate shading and tonality.

The illusion of depth is given by placing the background figures above those in the foreground. They look like the photographs taken by a telescopic camera: The figures stand out as if coming to greet you. One remarkable feature is that the central figure is larger than life while the background is filled with figures smaller in size, thus establishing a hierarchy of power and moral force. Here, a picture of the Buddha with his begging bowl looms large while his wife and son, who are rushing to him, fade into the background and are scarcely noticed against the majesty, the serenity and the self-transcendence of the Master.

Cave1 is rich in masterpieces. This bodhisattva, who is entitled to nirvana, has chosen repeated rebirths to minister to suffering mankind. Once again, Will Durant probes the depths of this work of art: “Never has the sadness of understanding been more profoundly portrayed. One wonders, which is finer or deeper – this or Leonardo’s kindred study of the head of Christ.”

Of the many bodhisattvas, the figures of the Buddha in his previous incarnations, Padmapanini, the sculpture the young prince Gautama with a jeweled crown on his head and white lotus in his right hand, is the masterpiece.  His tilted head and his compassionate downcast eyes share countless ages of pain, and his delicate lips speak words of solace to countless sufferers: The universe is not indifferent to the sorrows and strivings of its creatures. The paintings of four tender deer, delicate flowers and birds on the ceiling are expressions of the all-encompassing Buddhist love and sympathy towards all creatures

Though painted for religious purposes, the murals of Ajantha bear a secular rather than a religious message. We see the life of ancient India in panorama – princes in their palaces, charming women in languid poses, flying musicians, workers, beggars, peasants and ascetics stand frozen in time, with fleeting expressions unparalleled in art, amid the many beasts, birds and flowers of India. These were executed when the ancient Indian civilization was at its zenith, during the creative reigns of Hindu kings when ordinary people patronized artists. Here at Ajantha, religious devotion fused with architecture, sculpture and painting to produce a sovereign monument that appeals to the spirit of man.

Far away from the crazy crowd, wandering from cave to cave in a dimly lighted world, steeped in the lore of Buddha, not knowing how or why a golden aching begins to stir, take wing and then soar, with the music of chisel against rock still resonating in the silence, and your body dwarfed by the gigantic images of ethereal beauty and divine serenity, can you not feel the insignificance of your own self! What is modernity, after all, in the shadow of this ancient glory?

The End of the Era

A.D. 500: the death of a beloved king, fresh invasions, political uncertainty – work at Ajantha came to a standstill. Only the monks lingered, gazing sadly at the unfinished paintings and the half-carved doorways. The caves were never worked on again. They remained hidden from the outside world for years until two British officers rediscovered them quite by chance in 1819.

Wars and political upheavals forced the artisans to migrate in search of food and work. They reached the present Bombay area where Hindu kings patronized art. A century after their arrival, the cave sculptures of Elephanta emerged with the distinct Hindu stamp. To reach them, you travel in a speedboat for an hour from Bombay harbor and climb a steep hill. At the top, you are in the home of Siva, a major Hindu god. The cave temples here were carved out from a finely grained chocolate-brown sandstone, a material that could be sculpted with precision and detail.

One marked difference you find between Elephanta and a Buddhist cave temple is that while the Buddhist temple has only a single entrance in front, this site has three pillared entrances that allow light to flood the interior. The sanctum that contains a huge monolithic lingam, the Hindu phallic symbol, has entrances on all four sides, flanked by sculpted doorkeepers. Here you see 10 spectacular carvings of the legend of Siva.

The most awe-inspiring of all is the colossal carving of the Saivite Trinity, the best known of all ancient Indian sculptures. The three-headed bust of the Lord Siva grows out of a rock three times the size of a human being. Sit down; look. . . The silent, powerful middle head is the face of a serene God, composed with the calmness of eternity. On your left in profile is the angry face of the destroyer of the world, and on your right is the beautiful face of his wife, the goddess Parvathi, a supreme expression of the mystery of the transcendent! This is the highest plastic expression of the Hindu concept of divinity.

The subsidiary sculptures, too, are on a magnificent scale, 15 to 18 feet high. Here is an exquisite depiction of Siva as Ardhanari, half male, half female, the right representing Parvathi, his consort. And the “Marriage Scene of Siva and Parvathi” is glorious. The “Descent of the Ganga” ingeniously depicts the river Ganges tumbling down from the Himalayas by taking advantage of how the light falls upon it from different directions during the course of the day. You have to spend an entire day from dawn to dusk in contemplation in this serene atmosphere to receive its message, for this space takes you beyond the physical and the mythological into the sacred.

Artisans also drifted away from Ajantha to Ellora, where they began to work on the great Kailasanatha Temple. With this structure, the concept of the cave temple was transcended. It was no longer a hollow in the rock; but a splendid temple carved out to stand alone in three-dimensional space like a statue. It stands like the Parthenon, majestic on its hillside, complete with gateways, votive pillars, halls, shrines and cloisters, adorned with figures divine and human – all scenes from daily life rendered with a strength and grace rarely encountered in Indian art of later times. By the 10^th century A.D., the rock cut movement ceased in India.

When the Taliban razed the enormous statues of the Buddha, some among them mocked the destruction by taunting that “the Buddha smiles!.” Little did they stop to think about how, as they stooped to destroy, excavators in the Indian state of Bihar were busily at work unearthing a statue of the Buddha that, when it is finally freed from the overlying soil, will be the biggest of its kind on earth. Is this not the ultimate in irony? Yes, the Buddha smiles!