Caves

"Another pagoda, the best of all, is on an island called Pori, which we call the Isle of the Elephant. On it there is a hill and in the upper part of it is a subterranean house worked out of the living rock, and the house is as large as a monastery. Within there are courts and cisterns of good water. On the walls, all round, there are sculptured images of elephants, lions, tigers, and many human images, some like Amazons, and in many other shapes well sculptured. Certainly it is a sight well worth seeing, and it would appear that the devil had used all his powers and knowledge to deceive the gentiles into his worship. Some say that it is the work of the Chinese when they navigated to this land. It might well be true seeing that it is so well worked and that the Chinese are sutis. It is true that, at the present day, this pagoda is much defiled by cattle getting inside but in the year 1534, when I came from Portugal, it was a very fine sight. I saw it at the time when Bataim was at war with us. Soon afterwards the King of Cambaya ceded it to [Governor] Nuño da Cunha."

"We shall never be able to do justice to Indian art, for ignorance and fanaticism have destroyed its greatest achievements, and have half ruined the rest. At Elephanta the Portuguese certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity; and almost everywhere in the north the Moslems brought to the ground those triumphs of Indian architecture, of the fifth and sixth centuries, which tradition ranks as far superior to the later works that arouse our wonder and admiration today.... Time and fanaticism joined in the destruction, for the orthodox Hindus abandoned and neglected temples that had been profaned by the touch of alien hands."

"Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to the whale's is to be found in the famous cavern pagoda of Elephanta, in India .... The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form ofleviathan, learnedly known as the Matse-Avatar...."

"How do you ignore history? But the nationalist movement, independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don't tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated."

"Another pagoda, the best of all, is on an island called Pori [Gharapuri], which we call the Isle of the Elephant…On the walls, all round, there are sculptured images of elephants, lions, tigers, and many human images, some like Amazons, and in many other shapes well sculptured. Certainly it is a sight well worth seeing and it would appear that the devil had used all his powers and knowledge to deceive the gentiles into his worship. Some say it is the work of the Chinese when they navigated to the land. It might well be true seeing that it is so well worked."

"The mountain on this island which I said was opposite the Northern region, on the one side, which is a continuous cliff, is hard natural rock. Beneath the mountain a vast temple was cut and fashioned, hollowing out the living rock, a temple of such marvellous workmanship that it seems impossible for it to have been made by human hands. All the works, images, columns, reliefs, workrooms, which are there are carved in the massive stone of the mountain, all of which seems to pass beyond the bounds of nature; indeed, the proportions and the symmetry with which each figure and everything else is made would be well worth the while of any painter to study, even if he were Apelles. This temple is 35 bracas long, 25 wide and about 4 high. And what greater monument to pride could men fashion than to hollow out a very hard natural rock by means of iron and sheer tenacity, and thereby to enter into such vast spaces?"

"…not only the figures looked very beautiful, but the features and workmanship could be very distinctly perceived, so that neither in silver or wax could such figures be engraved with greater nicety, fineness or perfection…The From the pavement of this chapel issued a body from the waist upwards of so enormous size, that it fills the whole vacuum in length and breadth of the chapel: it has three large faces, the middle one looks to the north, the second to the west, and the other to the east. Each of these faces has two hands, and on the neck two large necklaces, wrought with considerable perfection. The figures have on their heads three very beautiful crowns.…[the interior was covered with a fine coat of lime and bitumen which] made the Pagoda so bright, that it looked very beautiful and was worth seeing."

"…and round about the wals are cut and formed, the shapes of Elephants, Lions, Tigers…Amazones and [many] other [deformed] things of divers sorts, which are all so well [and workmanlike] cut, that it is strange to behold."

"Having in a Week’s time compleated my Business, returning the same way, we steered by the South side of the Bay, purposely to touch at Elephanto, so called from a monstrous Elephant cut out of the main Rock, bearing a Young one on its Back; not far from it the Effigies of an Horse stuck up to the Belly in the Earth in the Valley; from thence we clambered up the highest Mountain on the Island, on whose Summit was a miraculous Piece hewed out of solid Stone: It is supported with Forty two Corinthian Pillars, being a Square, open on all sides but towards the East; where stands a Statue with three Heads, crowned with strange Hieroglyphicks: At the North side in an high Portuco stands an Altar, guarded by Giants, and immured by a Square Wall; all along, the Walls are loaded with huge Giants, some with eight hands, making their vanquished Knights stoop for mercy. Before this is a Tank full of water, and beyond that another Place with Images. This seems to be of later date than that of Canorein [Kanheri], though defaced by the Portugals, who have this Island also…"

"Here likewise are the just dimensions of a Horse Carved in Stone, so lively with such a Colour and Carriage and the shape finisht with that Exactness, that many have Fancyed it, at a distance, a living Animal, than only a bare Representation....These Figures have been Erected not barely for displaying the Statuary’s skill, or gratifying the Curiosity of the Sight, but by their admirable Workmanship were more likely design’d to win upon the Admiration, and thereby gain a kind of Religious Respect from such Heathens as came near them."

"Universal art has succeeded in few materialization of the Divine as powerful and also as balanced. ... the greatest representation of the pantheistic god created by the hands of man.... Never have the overflowing sap of life, the pride of force superior to everything, the secret intoxication of the inner god of things been so serenely expressed.""The three countenances of the one being are here harmonized without a trace of effort. There are few material representations of the divine principle at once as powerful and as well balanced as this in the art of the whole world. Nay, more, here we have undoubtedly the grandest representation of the pantheistic God ever made by the hand of man .. .Indeed, never have the exuberant vigor of life, the tumult of universal joy expressing itself in ordered harmony, the pride of a power superior to any other, and the secret exaltation of the divinity immanent in all things found such serenely expressed.""

"...the revising of the date for the cave temples of Elephanta to about 1000 c.k. in 1819 from early modern dates that made them contemporary with the Egyptian pyramids completely altered Europeans’ attitude toward the temples. As Partha Mitter has argued: ‘‘At one stroke the whole myth of [Elephanta’s] remote antiquity was demolished as it was brought within a conceivable historical era.”’"

"In the early nineteenth century, when Europeans first visited the Ajanta caves, they had no literary precedents through which to determine what they saw. Thus they saw very little beyond hunting scenes, domestic scenes, seraglio scenes, Welsh wigs, Hampton court beauties, elephants and horses, an Abyssinian black prince, shields and spears, and statues that they called 'buddha' because of the curly hair."

"Herodotus, wrote in 400 BC that in India there were "trees growing wild, which produce a kind of wool better than sheep’s wool in beauty and quality, which the Indians use for making their clothes.” During this period, the famous Ajanta Cave carvings show innovative cotton growers in India had invented an early roller machine to get the seeds out of the cotton."

"Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical, but I know for certain that had we not come away to Europe, I should perhaps never have realized that a fresco from Ajanta... is worth more than the whole Renaissance!"

"Revelations. Ellora magnificent. Ajanta curiously subtle and fascinating-I have for the first time since my return to India learnt something from somebody else's work."

"Richard Lannoy, the most scintillating interpreter of Indian culture to date, writes: At first sight it is the genial “Buddhist humanism” which strikes the visitor Itothe fresco caves]. Yet these reassuringly human scenes are not quite what they seem to be. For one thing, even the best preserved are exceedingly elusive to “read”; one must make an appreciable effort to slow down one's reading of their visual language in order to perceive the spatial and tactile relations established between the figures. There is no recession - all advance towards the eye, looming from a strange undifferentiated source to wrap around the viewer. This is not an optical illusion of cave-light; on close examination it will be found to result from a controlled use of almost equal tones in the variation of local colour. A patch of green, say, juxtaposed to a patch of red, is of very nearly the same tonality when photographed in monochrome. Because of this tonal equality one is constantly discovering new figures which were unseen through the deliberately unaccented or “suppressed” tonality of detail, and the tempo of this slow discovery is very precisely calculated. Every figure has a counterfigure, every body an anti-body. Each figure is inseparable from its environment. The optical basis of this technique is very simple and is frequently used by Bonnard, Vuillard, and Matisse to obtain a hallucinating, visionary effect; the later, psychedelic poster artists made a trick of it. One can assume that the Ajanta painters discovered the effect under similar lighting conditions. There is one vital difference, however; at Ajanta there is no source of light in the caves, a fact which says much about the metaphysic of the cave sanctuaries. Objects are their own light when experienced by all the senses in harmony, and such harmony was the goal of the cave ritual. When viewed by flickering light, as was intended, only' fragmentary glimpses of the colours and lines of the objects depicted can be obtained. A body undulates towards the eye from an indistinguishable blur; moments (perhaps minutes) later, a second body wells out of the blur and is seen to be intertwined with the first. The viewer is so involved in this optical assimilation that his relation to the other figure only proceeds gradually from the tactile to the emotional recognition of its significance. It cannot be reduced to verbal interpretation, as it is pure tactile sensation."

"But we cannot judge these works in their original form from what survives of them today; and doubtless there are clues to their appreciation that are not revealed to alien souls. Even the Occidental, however, can admire the nobility of the subject, the majestic scope of the plan, the unity of the composition, the clearness, simplicity and decisiveness of the line, and among many details the astonishing perfection of that bane of all artists, the hands. Imagination can picture the artist-priest who prayed in these cells and perhaps painted these walls and ceilings with fond and pious art while Europe lay buried in her early-medieval darkness. Here at Ajanta religious devotion fused architecture, sculpture and painting into a happy unity, and produced one of the sovereign monuments of Hindu art."

"The earliest dateable Indian painting is a group of Buddhist frescoes (ca. 100 B.C.) found on the walls of a cave in Sirguya, in the Central Provinces. From that time on the art of fresco painting—that is, painting upon freshly laid plaster before it dries—progressed step by step until on the walls of the caves at AjantaVII it reached a perfection never excelled even by Giotto or Leonardo. These temples were carved out of the rocky face of a mountain-side at various periods from the first to the seventh century A.D. For centuries they were lost to history and human memory after the decay of Buddhism; the jungle grew about them and almost buried them; bats, snakes and other beasts made their home there, and a thousand varieties of birds and insects fouled the paintings with their waste. In 1819 Europeans stumbled into the ruins, and were amazed to find on the walls frescoes that are now ranked among the masterpieces of the world’s art."

"The temples have been called caves, for in most cases they are cut into the mountains. Cave No. XVI, for example, is an excavation sixty-five feet each way, upheld by twenty pillars; alongside the central hall are sixteen monastic cells; a porticoed veranda adorns the front, and a sanctuary hides in the back. Every wall is covered with frescoes. In 1879 sixteen of the twenty-nine temples contained paintings; by 1910 the frescoes in ten of these sixteen had been destroyed by exposure, and those in the remaining six had been mutilated by inept attempts at restoration.21 Once these frescoes were brilliant with red, green, blue and purple pigments; nothing survives of the colors now except low-toned and blackened surfaces. Some of the paintings, thus obscured by time and ignorance, seem coarse and grotesque to us, who cannot read the Buddhist legends with Buddhist hearts; others are at once powerful and graceful, a revelation of the skill of craftsmen whose names perished long before their work."

"Despite these depredations, Cave I is still rich in masterpieces. Here, on one wall, is (probably) a Bodhisattwa—a Buddhist saint entitled to Nirvana, but choosing, instead, repeated rebirths in order to minister to men. 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.VIII On another wall of the same temple is a study of Shiva and his wife Parvati, dressed in jewelry. Nearby is a painting of four deer, tender with the Buddhist sympathy for animals; and on the ceiling is a design still alive with delicately drawn flowers and fowl. On a wall of Cave XVII is a graceful representation, now half destroyed, of the god Vishnu, with his retinue, flying down from heaven to attend some event in the life of Buddha; on another wall is a schematic but colorful portrait of a princess and her maids. Mingled with these chef-d’æuvres are crowded frescoes of apparently poor workmanship, describing the youth, flight and temptation of Buddha."

"The caves at Ajanta, besides being the hiding-place of the greatest of Buddhist paintings, rank with Karle as examples of that composite art, half architecture and half sculpture, which characterizes the temples of India. Caves I and II have spacious assembly halls whose ceilings, cut and painted in sober yet elegant designs, are held up by powerful fluted pillars square at the base, round at the top, ornamented with flowery bands, and crowned with majestic capitals; Cave XIX is distinguished by a façade richly decorated with adipose statuary and complex bas-reliefs; in Cave XXVI gigantic columns rise to a frieze crowded with figures which only the greatest religious and artistic zeal could have carved in such detail. Ajanta can hardly be refused the title of one of the major works in the history of art."

"…in the centre of this Island there exists that wonderful Pagoda of Canari, thus called from its being supposed to have been the work of the Canaras. It is constructed at the foot of a great Hill of Stone of light grey colour; there is a beautiful Hall at its entrance, and in the yard that leads to the front back door, there are two human figures engraved on the same stone, twice as big as the Giants exhibited on the Procession of the Corpus Christi feast in Lisbon, so beautiful, elegant, and so well executed, that even in Silver they could not be better wrought and made with such perfection."

"…Next Morn before Break of Day we directed our Steps to the anciently fame’d, but now ruin’d City of Canorein; the way to it is so delightsome, I thought I had been in England; fine Arable, Pasture, and Coppices; thus we passed Five Mile to the Foot of the Hill on which the City stands, and had passed half a Mile through a thick Wood, peopled by Apes, Tygers, wild Buffolo’s, and Jackalls; here were some Flocks of Parockets: When we alighted, the Sun began to mount the Horizon over the Hills, and under our Feet, as if he had newly bathed his fiery Coursers; there appeared the Mouth of a Tank, or Aqueduct, out of a Rock, whose steaming Breath was very hot, but water cold: From hence it is thought the whole City to be supplied with Water; for as we ascend, we find such Places, where convenient, filled with Limpid Water, not over-matched in India: If it be so, (as I know not how to contradict it) that it should have its Current upwards, through the hard Rocks artificially cut, the World cannot parallel so wonderful a Water-course! From hence the Passage is uneasy and inaccessible for more than two abreast, till we come to the City, all cut out of a Rock; where is presented Vulcan’s Forge, supported by two mighty Colosses, bellied in the middle with two Globes. Next a Temple with a beautiful Frontispiece not unlike the Portuco of St. Paul’s West Gate: Within the Porch on each side stand two Monstrous Giants [the Chaitya Caves, the giants being Buddhas], where two Lesser and one Great Gate give a noble Entrance; it can receive no Light but at the Doors and Windows of the Porch, whereby it looks more solemnly; the Roof is Arched, seeming to be born up by huge Pillars of the same Rock, some Round, some Square, 34 in number. The Cornish Work of Elephants, Horses, Lions; at the upper end it rounds like a Bow; near where stands a great Offertory somewhat Oval, the Body of it without Pillars, they only making a narrow Piatzo about, leaving the Nave open: It may be an 100 Feet in Length, in Height 60 Feet or more. Beyond this, by the same Mole-like Industry, was worked out a Court of Judicature (as those going to shew it will needs give Names) or Place of Audience, 50 Feet square, all bestuck with Imagery, Well Engraven according to old Sculpture. On the Side, over against the Door, sate one Superintendent, to whom the Brachmin went with us, paid great Reverence, not speaking of him without a token of worship; whom we called Jougy [jogi], or the Holy Man; under this the way being made into handsome Marble Steps, are the King’s Stables, not different from the Fashion of our Noblemens Stables, only at the head of every Stall seems to be a Dormitory, or Place for Devotion, with Images, which gave occasion to doubt if ever for that End; or rather made for an Heathen Seminary of Devotes and these their Cells or Chappels, and the open Place their Common Hall or School: More aloft stood the King’s Palace, large, stately and magnificent, surrounded with lesser of the Nobility. To see all, would require a Month’s time; but that we might see as much as could be in our allotted time, we got upon the highest part of the Mountain, where we feasted our Eyes with innumerable Entrances of these Cony-burrows, but could not see one quarter part. Whose Labour this should be, or for what purpose, is out of memory; but this Place by the Gentiles is much adored…the Portugals, who are now Masters of it, strive to erace the remainders of this Herculean Work, that it may sink into the oblivion of its Founders."

"The Pagod or Temple of the Canarin, whereof I intended to give an exact and true account, is one of the greatest wonders in Asia; as well because it is look’d upon as the Work of Alexander the Great, as for its extraordinary and incomparable Workmanship, which certainly could be undertaken by none but Alexander. What I most admire is that it is almost unknown to Europeans; for tho’ I have made much enquiry, I do not find that any Italian, or other European Traveller has writ of it… I climb’d the bare Craggy Rock with the Idolater, at the top whereof on the East side the great Pagod is hewn out, with other small ones by it."

"Old Man may I visit?"