India is an ancient country, whose fabulous riches have always been legendary. But even she can sometimes surprise! As a little box with a secret, she sometimes opens the veil of secrets and shares her wonders with the world. Even the Indians themselves learned about the cave temples of Ajanta only in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the man-made complex was created long before the birth of Jesus, and surpassed the pyramids of Cheops in its splendor.
EROTICS IN THE ROCKS
On April 28, 1819, a British cavalry officer of the 28th Madras Regiment with the banal name John Smith decided to hunt a leopard. He gathered a small company of colleagues and went to the jungle of the state of Maharashtra, which was famous for the abundance of predators.
Not far from the village of Ajanta, the British tracked down a tiger, and in the heat of the chase, Smith wandered into a ravine lush with tropical plants. When the forest parted in front of him, he dropped his gun in surprise. The stone Buddha gazed at him dispassionately. The Englishman took a few steps forward and saw that passages were carved right into the rock, leading deep into the mountain.
The officer called his comrades, and after a short meeting they decided to survey the place. Smith and his companions climbed the rock and entered the cave, lighting their path with torches made from tufts of dry grass. They found themselves in a stately chamber with a vaulted ceiling and columns.
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Opening their mouths, the British walked about the room and examined the walls with faded paintings. The ancient artists clearly did not suffer from complexes: along with scenes from the life of princes and princesses spending time in luxurious apartments, going out hunting and receiving guests, scenes of carnal love were encountered. The prim Englishmen at that time could not every day contemplate such frank pictures of erotic content.
The boldness of ancient artists, the riot of colors and the variety of bizarre statues took the British breath away. Under the dome of the sanctuary, the stone Buddha was praying - a giant statue on which Smith decided to leave his autograph as a sign that he was the first of the Europeans to enter this lost world.
Then John and his comrades walked around all 29 caves, stretching 500 meters along the rocky bank of the Vaghora River (Tigrina River), and after returning home, they told their colleagues about the find.
CURSE OF CAVES
The news spread quickly. Most of all, the architect and archaeologist James Ferguson, who turned out to be very useful in these parts, became interested in her. He made himself a decent fortune in India by trade, after which he went to travel around the country in order to study its artistic monuments.
In his homeland, Ferguson as an architect did not create anything outstanding, but became famous as a researcher of antiquity. In 1843 he brought to the Royal Asiatic Society a scientific report describing the caves, 24 of which were monasteries, 5 were temples.
Ferguson assigned numbers to all caves, and his numbering is still used today. “I numbered them like houses on the street,” he wrote. The archaeologist urged his compatriots to take the find responsibly: amazing painting was preserved in only a few caves, in others statues and frescoes were gradually destroyed under the influence of a humid and hot tropical climate.
After the scientist's report, Robert Gill, an officer of the 44th Madras Infantry Regiment, artist, photographer and antiquary, went to the Ajanta Caves in 1844. He was faced with the difficult task of examining and printing copies of the wall paintings on canvas. Robert Gill's trip marked the beginning of a long and painstaking work on the scientific description of artistic treasures in the Tigrina River valley. Jill spent several years in the jungle.
He had to work in terrible conditions. The area abounded with predators, and the indigenous inhabitants - the militant Bhils - did not like newcomers. Nevertheless, Jill completed the work he had begun and in 1847 presented the results of his efforts to the Royal Asiatic Society.
Scientists have calculated that the construction of the ancient complex was carried out in several stages. During the first, in the II-I centuries BC. e., five halls for general prayer were created. The second phase fell on the 5th century AD. BC, when under Harishen, the last great ruler of the Wakataka dynasty, the rest of the caves were carved and painted with frescoes. The latter were built a little later; they are monasteries with cells for monks.
Robert Gill copied the works of ancient Indian artists, returning from time to time to the caves of Ajanta. In total, he wrote about 30 works. All canvases were shipped to London and presented at the Indian Pavilion at the Crystal Palace - an exhibition complex and amusement park in Sydnam Hill, south London. But his work was destined for a sad fate: most of them burned down in a fire on December 30, 1866.
In 1885, another part of the work was destroyed in a fire in the exhibition hall of the Royal Palace in South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). The Hindus started talking about the curse of the Ajanta caves: all who disturbed the peace of the complex ended badly. Troubles and tragedies could not be avoided by any of those who sought to penetrate the caves of Ajanta. Did the gods really take revenge on their offenders?
In 1861, the Royal Commission for Cave Temples founded the Archaeological Survey of India, which is still active today. The British strove to preserve the cultural heritage of Ajanta: more and more lovers of antiquity and treasure hunters headed to the Tiger River to steal what was lying badly.
Vandals not only scratched their names on the walls, frescoes and statues, but scraped paintings off the walls, chipped pieces off statues and robbed, robbed, robbed …
In 1872, John Griffiths, director of the art school in Bombay, was sent to the caves. He had the same mission as Gill: to capture ancient painting on canvas. Fortunately, his work has survived. His followers, the Indian archaeologist and art historian Gulam Yazdani and the English patroness of arts Christine Harringham, were also lucky. The paintings of the latter have survived to this day.
SHADOWS OF THE GREAT PAST
For the time being, all the surviving copies were kept in the storerooms of various museums in London, but in 2005 they were collected together, restored and displayed. The audience was able to assess with their own eyes the scale of the work of the ancient masters.
If only the stone laces of the carving are drawn in a line, its length reaches the snows of Chomolungma. And frescoes are considered the crown of oriental art. In one of the underground halls, painting occupies over a thousand square meters, and not only walls, but also columns and ceilings are painted. All 29 caves used to look like this! The Indian masters seemed to strive to transfer all the wealth and variety of the outside world to the cramped world of the dungeons.
Archaeologists are still puzzling over how the ancient painters managed to create in the twilight of the caves. How did they manage to paint the walls with the finest designs with many color shades?
How did they carve such perfect statues in the pitch darkness? Maybe they used mirrors for this? Catching the sun's rays and directing them to the walls? Questions, questions, questions… And only one of them has a clear and intelligible answer today.
So why did the monks leave this place? Everything is very simple: in the XIII century, interest in Buddhism faded, and the followers of this religion became less and less. When the last guardians of the faith died, the monastery and temple were empty. For centuries, the complex was abandoned, the caves were overgrown with grass, and only bats looked indifferently at the masterpieces of antiquity.
Today, the Ajanta Caves are visited by thousands of tourists a year. They are offered to examine the copies in a specially built complex, but the majority, for obvious reasons, prefer to visit ancient monasteries and temples. Of the 29 caves, only 13 have preserved fragments of paintings and statues, but this is enough to understand how large-scale the ancients thought.
Vlad STROGOV