I closed my eyes and transported myself back in time.
Two and half thousand years ago, in this place, at this time there would have been hundreds of people working with mere chisels and hammers, carving out this temple from a rock. The sound would have echoing into the valley all through the day, except during mornings and evenings, when it would have been replaced by chanting by thousands of monks. In their orange robes, they would have queued in front of the massive Buddha statue, smell of incense would have filled the atmosphere in the dim light of oil lamps.
I couldn’t smell the incense, neither could I hear the chanting, but I could imagine them in the few quite moments I sat there by myself while a stream of people kept coming in and out to admire the wonder we were in.
My husband and I are on a two months trip to India exploring places we always wanted to visit while living in India but were never able to. The first leg of our trip started from Aurangabad, in Central India, which provides access to both Ajanta and Ellora caves, the UNESCO heritage sites, and the one of oldest cave temples in India. I am in the cave number 17 of Ajanta complex, one of the finest and magnificent Mahayana monastery.
“It looks like a church!” I exclaimed as I entered.
“No M’aam, churches look like this temple,’’ corrected our guide Dr Subash Jadhav, “These caves were build much before Christ.”
Ever since I had read about Ajanta and Ellora caves in Year-8 history books, I wanted to see them with my own eyes. Almost fifty years later, I drove 120 kms , with my husband, another couple, a driver and a guide, to get to the rocky northern wall of the U shaped gorge of Waghur river in the Souther plateau of India. Although a cultural and religious hub for thousands of years, the caves were covered by forest for until a British soldier, Captain John Smith accidentally discovered them while following a tiger. There a young boy lead him to the entrance of a cave and the rest was the history.
“There are 29 caves in total,” explained our guide, who holds a PhD degree in tourism and has worked extensively on these caves and has accompanied many historians here and other historical site in India during their research. “But not all of them are for praying purposes. The ones with flat roofs were the living quarters and were called vihars. The ones with dome shaped celings are called chaitya, they were temples, where monks gathered for praying.”
We learned that the caves were built in two phases, from 2nd century BC to 6th century AD and took over 900 years to complete. They were not just a retreat for monks but a resting place for merchants and pilgrims. They were also the art and cultural centre where the life and religious stories were recorded in pictorial form.
“Look here,” Dr Subash pointed his torch to a mural in the ceiling of a cave, “a man and woman are drinking wine.”
“Wine?” We questioned, “How do you know they are drinking wine?”
“Look at the container the man is holding in his hand. It is not a glass but a goblet. And he is holding it from the stem, not from the top. Why do we hold a glass from the stem? He asked and answered. “When we don’t want the content to go warm from the heat of our hands.”
“Amazing!”
“That’s not it. Have a look at this one.” He pointed to another mural. “This person is opening a glass bottle with a bottle opener. Which indicates that the content of the bottles are carbonated.”
We were speechless.
Many murals had foreign looking men and women indicating exchange of cultures was quite prevalent. Some murals had men who looked Middle Eastern and women who had Chinese features. Many murals showed the daily life of people, but most of them depicted Jataka (Buddhist religious) storie.
Not all the caves had murals. The cave numbers 1, 2, 16, 17 had the largest surviving murals. Back in 19th century, the then king of the area, invited an Italian ancient art restoration team to revive some murals. When they applied their chemical in two caves all the paintings got damaged. Darkened remnants, now covered in glass were evidence of the debacle.
Despite the lush green vegetation and cool breeze from the river underneath, the heat was unbearable. Although we wanted to visit all the caves we gave up after cave 17. But I managed to steal a few moments to sit alone in one of monks quarters to write. As I sat crosslegged on the flat rock, which once was a bed for a monk, when a women peeked through the narrow door and asked if she could take a photo of me.
I laughed. This was my one moment of fame.
Today’s lesson and writing prompt - Crafting a travel story
Become a member of the ‘Everything Is A Book’ community and join me and others in this exciting journey of writing a travel memoir.
To write more books in the coming months, find more info here.
See you next Friday
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Everything Is A Book to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.