File:Footfalls of Indian history (1915) (14597038939).jpg

Identifier: footfallsofindia00niveuoft (find matches)
Title: Footfalls of Indian history
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Nivedita, Sister, 1867-1911
Subjects: India -- Description and travel India -- Religion Ajanta Caves (India)
Publisher: London : Longmans Green
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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an rail become a mannerism at Ajanta, diverg-ing constantly further and further from their trueintention ; and by these progressive changes wecan make a rough estimate of the ages of the caves.In Nine and Twelve they are used with obvioussincerity, reflecting the conceptions of their age,in the same way that the early printers of Europelaboured to make their machine-printed books lookas if they had been written by hand. On viharasEight and Thirteen they do not occur at all.Evidently the founders were too early or too poorto indulge in such elaboration. Chaitya NumberTen had a timber front, which has fallen awayand leaves no trace of its image or likeness, savein the panels sculptured in the rocks on eitherside. But these horse-shoe ornaments do notaltogether cease till after Cave Nineteen. At firstthey are frankly windows in house fronts. In CaveTwelve. they are to suggest used fan-lights overthe cell-doors and run round the walls connectingone with another in simple dignity. In Caves
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AIAXTA: INTERIOR OF CAVE NINETEEN THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF A.TANTA 67 Six, Seven, and Fifteen we find the spaces filledwith lotus patterns, and the semicircular openingno longer has a definite meaning. They are nolonger windows. They are now only decorative.On the facade of Cave Nineteen foreign influencesare at work. A horrible vulgarity has come overthe workmen, strictly comparable to the degradingeffects of European taste on Indian crafts to-day.Each of these once beautiful outlines is now filledwith a hideous grinning face, altogether meaning-less. From the chequer-work which recurs hereagain and again (an ornament common amongstthe Gandhara sculptures in the Calcutta collection),it is clear that these influences have come fromthe north-west. They are possibly Greek, as trans-mitted through Persia. There had been a greatrapprochement between India and Persia in thecourse of the fifth century, and nowhere is thecrude secularising effect of the West on Indiantaste better illustrated. Ye

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