An Introduction to the Ajanta Caves: With examples of six caves

The monograph is aimed for a special section of readers—those who teach or research in the universities on the subject of the ancient Indian history and culture, or Buddhist art and archaeology in the Indian subcontinent, and other such general readers who desire to understand in detail the various intricacies of the Ajanta caves and their paintings.

For such readers, a rather unprecedented attempt has been made to present the following broad range of study materials within the scope of a single volume:

1. An account of the historical, religious, and political background of Ajanta, such that is based on the latest researches.
2. Systematic and summarised descriptions of the complete corpus of the narrative wall paintings based on the new research and corpus by Dieter Schlingloff of Leipzig University.
3. Systematic photographic documentation of the narrative wall paintings by reproducing at least one photograph for each of the narrative wall painting that is still extant in some measure. The present corpus sadly excludes the paintings of the caves 9 and 10 because of the extremely poor state of preservation that has been beyond the author’s scope of photography.
4. Detailed contextual explanation of some sculptures, iconography, and inscriptions.
5. An introduction to the architecture and chronological development sequence of some select Ajanta caves.
6. Specifically detailed study of the cave numbers 1, 2, 16, and 17 to present a new history of these select cave temples. The new history is based on such new evidence, facts, data, and their analysis that were either not documented before, or whose detailed analysis based on scientific methods of holistic research was not yet attempted, or was not presented in a format and language that is available to and simplified for a broader section of readers.