The Ajanta Caves in India contain 32 caves carved into basalt rock cliffs over 1,500 years ago. Using only hammers and chisels, skilled craftsmen meticulously cut columns, rooms, and ceilings inside the rock. They decorated the walls and ceilings with colorful paintings depicting realism, depth, and perspective that were ahead of their time in Europe. Some caves served as monasteries or temples for Buddhist monks, with carved beds and areas for worship similar to later Christian cathedrals. Though created with only simple tools, the cave paintings and architecture have survived for centuries as examples of ancient Indian artistic skill.

1. THE AJANTA CAVES
INDIA

2. Little more than the two hours of the old city of
Aurangabad if points out the famous Caves of Ajanta,
thirty and two grottos that are not of all natural but
that the thousand had been cut in hills of years for
workers who had only used cinzéis and hammers.
Sculptured in the volcanic basalt rock, the craftsmen
had been meticulously cinzelando the rock little by
little, Cutting the columns in strategical places and
creating some rooms inside of the rock. The walls and
ceilings wonderfully had been decorated and with
plaster applications had created colorful paintings.

3. General view of the place

4. The majority of paintings has more than 1500
years . Ten centuries before the birth of Michel
Angelo, Leonardo daVinci and the European
renaissance, these unknown artists already
knew to describe the perspective, the depth and
the realism in their paintings. The expressions
and emotions captured in the faces of the
painting, are so real that today, after some
centuries, they can be admired.

6. The oldest cave retraces to century II
before Christ. Some of them are
Viharas(convents) or monasteries,
great chambers with small rooms that
they lead are of the main room and it
was where they lived monks. Some of
these rooms have beds of cut rock, with
a cushion in which monks could rest its
head.

8. .
The remaining portion of the caves is Chaityas or
temples, very similar the Christian cathedrals, with
ceilings abobodados and with wooden beams that if
cross in ribbings, with decorated pillars of rocks, e in
the central ship (where a Christian church a great
statue of Buddha would have its altar). It has that to
remember itself that these temples of rock had been
cut many centuries before the Christian cathedrals,
what can lead to speculate if they had not been these
caves the inspiration for the great architects of the
Medieval Age, and not them Greek and Roman
classic temples

10. It is surprising to think that, the great
masters who had created these wonders,
they counted only on small tools of work.
Still they had thus bequeathed something
universal, magical, and that today we can
contemplate. The centuries seem small
water drops in the Walls of these caves

11. Plate in the entrance of
the caves

12. The caves of Ajanta

13. One of the entrances of the caves

15. 32 caves are excavated in the rock

16. One of the entrances

17. Two elephants in one
of the doors

18. Rio Vaghora

19. Some caves are monasteries

20. Interior

22. A great reclineed Buddha

26. A Hindu family
who admires
the work of its
ancestor

27. well conserved wallwell conserved wall

33. frescos in the walls

44. Guard who takes care of of the entrance

45. END