Ajanta Caves

Long, long ago, hot lava flowed over this land. It cooled into hard, dark rock.

Much later, workers cut into the cliff. Bit by bit, they made halls, pillars and rooms. Some caves were never finished.

National Geographic explains that about 66 million years ago, huge volcanic eruptions flooded India's Deccan Plateau with lava. When the lava cooled, it left thick layers of a dark rock called basalt. The Waghora River later cut a deep, curving gorge into it, shaped like a horseshoe.

The builders of Ajanta did not build walls; they took rock away. Working with hand tools, they cut doorways into the cliff, then hollowed out halls, carved pillars and left stone shapes standing inside. UNESCO says the unfinished caves are especially useful, because they show the steps and methods the carvers used.

National Geographic describes the setting: about 66 million years ago, more than a hundred thousand years before the Chicxulub impact, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth's history began flooding the Deccan Plateau with roughly 135,000 cubic miles of lava, leaving the region covered in basalt. A 2016 rock-mechanics study by India's Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research confirms that the caves were carved by hand into basalt of the Deccan Traps, and IGNCA's guide notes horizontal flaws in nearly every pillar that follow the boundaries between lava flows. (Britannica's entry calls the cliffs granite; the geological studies show basalt.) The Waghora has cut a horseshoe-shaped gorge, which the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) notes ends in a sequence of seven connected waterfalls.

Rock-cut architecture is subtractive: every pillar, vault and shrine was released from the living rock, so a mistake could not be undone. UNESCO singles out the unfinished caves 5, 24 and 29 as excellent evidence of the techniques and methods of excavation. The chaityagrihas have vaulted ceilings, an apse at the far end, and colonnades dividing a central nave from side aisles, with a stupa carved from the same rock standing in the apse.

The walls and ceilings are painted.

You can see kings and queens, musicians and merchants. There are elephants, monkeys and geese. Flowers and vines curl all around. Some paintings show the Buddha.

Ajanta's paintings were made in a technique called tempera, with colors mixed into a binder and painted onto prepared walls. National Geographic says only fragments of most murals survive, but enough remain to fill the caves with life: princes and princesses, merchants, musicians and servants, along with elephants, monkeys, buffalo, horses and even ants, among blooming trees and lotus flowers.

Many paintings illustrate Buddhist stories called Jatakas, and many paintings and sculptures show the Buddha. In Cave 1, a life-size painted figure holding a lotus, called Padmapani, has looked out at visitors since the fifth century. Pillars, doorways and facades are covered with carving too.

UNESCO records that in the second phase the walls were embellished with exquisite mural paintings executed in tempera, while pillars, brackets, door jambs, shrines and facades were richly carved. It notes that the first-phase caves represent the Buddha only through symbols, while in the second phase images of the Buddha appear in the paintings and sculpture. National Geographic describes the Jataka murals, which illustrate Buddhist stories, the life-size Padmapani of Cave 1, and the reclining Buddha sculpture of Cave 26, carved in the late fifth or early sixth century.

Britannica calls the paintings colorful and full of an exuberance and vitality unsurpassed in Indian art. National Geographic adds that most murals survive only as fragments, yet they depict royalty, merchants, beggars, musicians, servants and soldiers, and a crowd of animals and plants. UNESCO also values the many inscriptions, which name donors and give information about the society of the time.

Buddhist monks once lived in the caves.

The monks slept in small stone rooms. Some rooms had a bed made of stone. The monks met together in the big halls.

The viharas were homes. UNESCO explains that each has a hall for meetings, with small cells around three sides where the monks lived. National Geographic says the cells are bare except for stone beds, and that at one time several hundred monks lived in the caves.

The tall chaityagrihas were halls for gathering. Their front is crowned by a big horseshoe-shaped window, called a chaitya window, which lets light into the dark hall. Today, bats live in some caves, and conservation experts from India and Japan list their droppings, along with rainwater, among the problems for the paintings.

UNESCO describes the monasteries as an astylar hall for congregation surrounded on three sides by cells that served as the monks' dwellings, while the chaityagrihas have a facade dominated by the horseshoe-shaped chaitya window and an interior with an aisle continuing behind the apse so people could walk around the stupa. National Geographic notes stone beds in the cells and several hundred monks at the site's height. IGNCA's account of Cave 16, located at the center of the curving scarp, estimates about 32 residents, two for each of its 16 cells, and says its donor was Varahadeva, prime minister of the Vakataka emperor Harisena.

The caves still shelter life. National Geographic writes that, before 1819, they were home to bats and known to local people. A 2009 joint mission of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, and the Archaeological Survey of India studied bat droppings, rainwater seeping in, weak bedrock and blackening likely caused by smoke as threats to the murals.

Ajanta is a very old and special place.

Walk carefully on the paths and steps with a grown-up. Look at the paintings, but never touch them. Speak softly inside the caves.

The paintings are about 1,500 years old or more, and once they are damaged they cannot be replaced. UNESCO lists crowds of visitors in the painted caves as one of the main pressures on the site, along with loose boulders on the cliff. So keep your hands off the walls, follow the guides' and guards' instructions, and give other visitors space.

The caves are reached along paths and steps on a cliff face, so walk, don't run, and hold a grown-up's hand. Rules set by India's ancient monuments law also limit building and other activity close to the caves, to protect them for the future.

UNESCO identifies visitor pressure in the painted caves, the management of the protected site, the structural stability of the caves including loose boulders, and staff capacity as the key issues for the property. Under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act (1958) and forest laws, a prohibited area extends 100 m and a regulated area 200 m from the protected site, and a Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan is being implemented.

Conservation science explains why touching and crowding matter. The Tokyo-ASI mission of 2009 installed data loggers to measure temperature and humidity, studied the painting materials with nondestructive X-ray fluorescence, and recorded damage from water infiltration, bat droppings and soot. Visitors help by keeping to the paths, never touching painted or carved surfaces, and following the site's rules; the cliff paths and steps call for care, especially with young children.