Volume 6, Number 1

The Paintings of Ajanta and Echoes in other Buddhist Sites

  Authors

Shushmita Chatterji Dutt, Educationist and Research Consultant, India

  Introduction

The wall paintings or murals of the Ajanta Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are one of the earliest examples of Buddhist paintings as they are extant in India today. The world of Buddhist paintings are many layered and multifaceted, covering paintings on cave walls to silk tank has using plant and mineral paints to the now new synthetic colours. This paper tries only to understand the paintings as they have been found on the cave walls of the Ajanta caves at Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Padamshree Prof. M.K. Dhavalikar quotes from the Discovery of India to describe these wonders “ Ajanta takes you back to a distant, dream-like but real world.” [ RK Singh interview with Padmashree MK Dhavalikar, Sept 25, 2015] Buddhism is not a religion held to have been revealed by the Divine, a received religion. It is a philosophy that developed from life and lived experiences. Ajanta paintings had been initiated at a time when some of the schools of Buddhism were developing architectural forms and images that would accurately represent their beliefs. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVMdttx4aTg ]