The Development of the Vihara Shrine from Bagh to Ajanta

APPENDIX ONE

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VIHARA SHRINE FROM BAGH TO AJANTA

(For Professor M.A. Dhaky)1 Both Bagh and Ajanta (main phase) were started in about 462, very shortly after the emperor Harisena’s accession (ca 460).2 At both sites, viharas for the monks, designed as simple “dormitories”, were vigorously undertaken by wealthy and important patrons. Suggesting the enthusiastic support of these new ventures, at Ajanta alone no less than fourteen of these viharas, both large and small, were started during the first two years of excavating activity. Furthermore, as we might expect, following ancient precedents, ambitious caitya halls—in fact not one but two—were started at Ajanta at this same time, in order to provide appropriate places for the monks’ devotions. The viharas started at Bagh, where the scarp is more limited in extent, were fewer in number, but much larger in size. (See Part 1 Pl. 6, 70) This was, in large part, because excavating the soft Bagh sandstone was much easier and faster than cutting out such halls from the recalcitrant basalt at Ajanta. However, at Bagh, there is a surprising omission. It has no caitya hall, even though nearly all monastic sites, starting from centuries earlier, had such high and spacious halls, containing a stupa, as their essential central feature. The explanation for this unexpected absence is probably because of the highly friable character of Bagh’s sandstone, which made the excavation of any such spacious vaulted excavation technically impos- sible. (See Part 1 Pl. 62) It was surely the absence of such a caitya hall at Bagh that explains why a stupa shrine was added to the site’s earliest vihara, Bagh Cave 2. (See Part 1 Pl. 70, 78) This addition immediately made the cave into a place for devo- tion as much as for residence. For the whole of central India, all of which would soon be included in Harisena’s domains, this was a revolutionary development, and it soon impacted directly upon the design and intended

1 An earlier version of this chapter was written for the forthcoming publication in honor of Professor M.A. Dhaky (ed: P.P. Dhar and G.J.R. Mevissen; Temple Architecture and Imagery of South and Southeast Asia, Aryan Books, New Delhi). 2 For the dating of Ajanta, see W. Spink, Ajanta: History and Development, Volume I, 2005, 7–21. 32 part 1: ajanta, bagh and dandin usage of Ajanta’s viharas too. However, at Ajanta, the addition of stupa shrines did not take place until at least 468, notably in Cave 11 and argu- ably in Cave 6L.3 (See Part 1 Pl. 77) This may have been because the plan- ners/patrons at Ajanta did not require such innovative shrines, when they already had two Hinayana caitya halls (Caves 9 and 10) actively in worship from the very start of Vakataka patronage at the site, in about 462. Further- more, their own new worship halls (Caves 19 and 26) would already have been underway at the same time. In fact, the development of these new caitya halls at Ajanta, now planned to contain focal Buddha images, must have been responsible for the sudden abandonment of the stupas that were being roughed out, in 468, in Ajanta Cave 11 and probably also in Cave 6L.4 These stupas, now rapidly aborted, were immediately replaced by the ubiquitous shrine Buddhas that were soon to be found in every later vihara at the site. It seems clear, seeing how this compulsion took over the site, that these new shrine Buddhas directly reflect the impact of the new Buddha images now being planned for the two new caitya halls Caves 19 and 26), and actually underway in caitya Cave 19 by 468. Furthermore, this dramatic emergence of images from the tradi- tionally austere caitya halls’ stupas would seem to explain the sudden rush, at Ajanta, to add such shrine images not only to Caves 11 and 6L but also to Caves 7 and 15 early in 469, and the insistence of all later patrons, starting with Caves 17, 20, and 1, to make similar image shrines. The haste with which these changes impacted upon the site is evident in the problematic shrine design in Cave 1, 4, and 17. It seems clear that these shrines were originally planned with a central block, intended to be cut into a stupa. Although such stupas never got cut, the presence of such a central block severely affected the troubled composition of the Buddha groups which would be later found in Caves 1 and 4 and even 17.5 If Bagh was the source for the development of stupa shrines—either begun or intended—at Ajanta some half-decade later, in 468, Ajanta was surely responsible for the introduction of Buddha imagery into the originally severe (stupa only) shrines in both Bagh Caves 2 and 4 at about this same time. This explains the phenomenon of the added attached images

3 See W. Spink, Volume V, see Cave 6L. 4 For the replacement of the stupa in Cave 11 by the Buddha image, see Spink Volume V, Cave 11; For a more disputable transformation, see Spink, Volume V, Cave 6L. 5 The shrines of Cave 1 and Cave 4, by 468, both planned with a central block, were both transformed, with difficulty, into image shrines: Cave 1’s in 476–477, Cave 4’s in 477/478. For the related transition from originally intended stupas to their later images in Cave 17 and 20 in 470–471, see Spink Volume V, Cave 17; 20.