Message #28: Ajanta and Ellora

(Message sent Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:38:14 -0700)

I'm in Aurangabad, a town in the center of Maharashtra state. It's a nice enough little town, with some interesting things to see, including a deja vu inducing mausoleum that is a scaled-down version of the Taj Mahal. But I am really here to see the holy trinity of sights towards which I have been making my way all this time: Ajanta, Ellora, Lonar.

Like many such places, Ajanta would be worth seeing just for the natural splendor alone. A little river runs down a wonderful waterfall consisting of seven or eight pools each overflowing down a narrow cascade to the one below. When the river reaches the bottom of this series it turns sharply and flows in a tight horseshoe shape through a canyon with an almost sheer rock face. And into this rock face, over a span of some centuries ending around 500 AD, Buddhist monks carved a series of thirty or so temples, apparently to give them something to do during the rainy season.

The story goes that the temples were abandoned and completely forgotten until 1819 when a group of British soldiers out tiger hunting stumbled upon them. One of the many delights of the site is that you can hike up to the spot from which the rediscovery was allegedly made. And what an amazing view it is. From that spot you can take in the whole complex - the horseshoe-shaped cliff and all the temples - in one glance. It gives you some idea of what an amazing day that must have been for the lads who found it.

The temples are hacked into the cliff in a rough line well above the level of the river. Originally each temple was reached by a precarious staircase hacked into the cliff, leading down to the river. Sadly this aspect has been obliterated by a footpath built in modern times just under the level of the temples. Because the cliff face is so sheer a big concrete retaining wall had to be built to support the footpath. Of course I completely understand where the pressure to build such a thing came from, but it's a shame that they couldn't come up with a more sympathetic solution.

The temples come in two types: low wide halls with the roof supported by lots of pillars formed out of rock left in place, and taller, narrower temples with arched ceilings and little in the way of internal supports.

The halls all feature alcoves containing statues of the Buddha. I always think of the Buddha as sitting in the lotus position, but in these renditions he's seated as on a throne as often as not. I assume this represents an earlier set of conventions in rendering him.

All the walls and some of the ceilings were originally painted - showing scenes from the life of the Buddha - but the paintings are so degraded now that it's hard to make anything out.

One of the things that I really liked about the place is that some of the temples were abandoned half-finished, so you can get some idea of how they were made. They were hacked out of the rock from the ceiling down. This of course makes perfect sense, but it still looks very odd for some reason to see the top third of a set of columns, complete with capitals, emerging from the rough uneven 'floor' and joining the flat, finished ceiling not far above.

The caves are at 20 33.097 N 075 42.041 E. This reading was taken from a lookout point across the river from the horseshoe.

The Ellora caves, dating from around 500 to 1000 AD, are similar in many respects. The natural setting is no-where near as impressive as at Ajanta, but the sequence of construction of the caves tells two fascinating tales: one sociological, one technological. The earliest caves are Buddhist like those at Ajanta, then there are a few containing both Buddhist and Hindu aspects, then there are a group of Hindu temples, and finally a group of Jain temples, the sequence documenting changes in religious thought over the centuries. Generally I liked the Hindu caves the best, as the statues had much more varied scenes, including several appearances of my good friend Varaha.

The rock outcrop into which the temples were cut starts off as a cliff, but the slope very quickly reduces to almost flat as you move along the face of the outcrop. This meant that as each new temple was built beside the previous one, they had first to cut out increasingly large pits in order to provide a vertical surface into which to cut the temple proper. So the later temples have large, straight-sided courtyards in front of them. Then you can see that it occurred to them to leave some of the rock in the courtyard still attached to the rock below, and then fashion it into small subsidiary temples. The final result of this thinking is a huge pit with a three-storied colonnaded temple cut into the back wall, and a small square building in the front of the courtyard.

And then. And then. And then. Oh boy. And then it occurred to some bright spark that the game was now all about the structures left behind in the courtyard itself, and no longer about sinking a temple into a cliff. This thinking produced an utterly astonishing and almost literally unbelievable thing called the Kailasa Temple, built around 760 AD.

They basically sank an immense pit into a nearly-flat section of rock, leaving behind I guess around 30% of the rock in the middle, still a part of the rock below. This they then carved into a temple, the whole thing seeming to rest on the backs of a line of elephants themselves standing on a high platform. Then they hollowed out the temple, leaving a huge colonnaded hallway with niches for the various gods, all of it inside the rock that wasn't removed when the pit was dug.

The thing I found most audacious is that the interior spaces of the three major structures thus formed - a gateway, a minor temple, and a major temple - are all connected by a bridge about five metres up. And all of it constructed just by removing the bits of rock that weren't needed. They also left behind enough attached rock to build the odd spire and free-standing elephant.

One thing I really liked about the site is that, as well as going into the pit itself, you can hike up to the top of the pit and look down into the extraordinary creation - the path making only a token nod towards safety.

The temple is a simply stunning achievement, and the idea that human beings could conceive of, design, and build such a thing just blows my mind.

The temple is at 20 01.435 N 075 10.780 E.

On the way out to Ellora I stopped at a fort called Daulatabad. What an amazing place. It dates from around 1200 AD, and is based around a natural pyramid-shaped hill set in a flat plain. Wrapped all the way around the hill is a high cliff, right were the hill joins the plain. I'm not sure, but I think this cliff is artificial, chiseled out of the hill as part of the fortifications.

On the plain at the base of the hill are a series of walls. As you approach the hill you first walk through a double wall, the path taking frequent defensive turns and going through gateways whose wooden doors are studded with spikes as high as an elephant's eye. Literally. These were allegedly to deter elephants from being used to push the gates down. Then you walk down a long straight path which has wells and temples and things to either side. Then you make a twisting turning passage through a third wall. Then you have to cross the moat cut right at the base of the cliff, which still has water in it. And then the really cool stuff starts.

The first part of the ascent up the hill is entirely underground. A tunnel has been bored into the rock, leading you upwards in a spiralling fashion via a series of curving ramps and stairs. There are murder holes above, so you can imagine how dire things would be for an attacker who got that far, suddenly plunged as they would be into a completely dark tunnel, with who knows what pouring down on them from above.

There is no electric lighting in the tunnel. I had brought my trusty torch (as used on the mean streets by Melbourne's finest), but a man offered to light the way for me with a flaming brand, which seemed more authentic. I used my torch for spying on the thousands of bats roosting on the ceiling however.

Once clear of the tunnel and above the level of the cliff, a set of steps takes you up the hill to a citadel, and then finally another set of steps takes you to a tower on the very top of the pyramid, upon which is mounted a massive cannon (19 56.525 N 075 12.745 E). Absolutely magnificent place.

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