"Pitalkhora, two hours’ drive to the north of Aurangabad, is believed by scholars to be the oldest Buddhist cave monastery after Bhaja. It lies in a spectacularly wild ravine."
"Plunging cliffs fall to a narrow terrace where a group of chaitya halls have been burrowed into the rock face, hanging like a swallow’s nest high above an arid plateau."
"It is a fabulously resonant spot; yet as with Bedsa it was once clearly a place of great sophistication, connected to the metropolitan centres of its day. Two inscriptions record donations by merchants from Pratisthana, modern Paithan, once the great port of the west coast."
"It was these merchant patrons who paid for artists to come and paint the murals: saintly-looking orange robed monks standing, almost levitating, on pink lotuses; Bodhisattva figures of otherworldly compassion and calm attending meditating Buddhas. "
"Lying scattered around the site are sculptures of musicians, flowers and foliage, loving mithuna couples embowered in lotus and honeysuckle motifs, Persian winged gryphons and lines of stately elephants."
"Sadly, though, Pitalkhora is now in an advanced state of disintegration. In recent years several of the halls have collapsed."
Most tragic of all is the loss of one of the two star sculptures at the site, a life-size dvarapala guardian figure in the form of an Indo-Greek soldier, whose mailed Ionian fringed tunic is offset by his very Indian serpentine earrings, knotted turban and rather homely dhoti"
"The figure, one of the great masterpieces of early Buddhist sculpture, was smashed to pieces 15 years ago. As there was no custodian, the culprits were never found."
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"The murals of Ajanta are now recognised as some of the greatest art produced by humankind in any century, as well as the finest picture gallery to survive from any ancient civilisation. Even today, the colours glow with a brilliant intensity: topaz-dark,lizard green, lotus-blue"
"An hour’s drive from Bedsa, up another precipitous pilgrim’s path, lies the monastery of Karle, which boasts perhaps the most exquisitely wrought hall to survive from ancient India."
"Here the façade of the monastery is filled with lines of stone elephants and, facing them, paired statues of scantily-clad mithuna couples, loving fertility figures, several of them dancing merrily together."
"Despite the sanctity of the site, specifically built to house celibate monks, we are here at times nearer the world of Bollywood than of the otherworldly Buddha that westerners – or the more austere Thai or Chinese Buddhists – might expect to find decorating such a sanctuary."
"The far side of the same spine of mountains that shelters Bhaja also contains another spectacular rock-cut monastery, Bedsa. This is a slightly younger complex, and more remotely situated, high on a narrow ledge up an even more inaccessible valley."
"If you squeeze through a narrow cut in the rock to your right, you find, hidden away along a narrow passageway – as surprising as the façade of the great pink treasury at Petra – a magnificent rock-cut chaitya portico 12m high, conceived and sculpted on the grandest scale."
"Here the capitals are decorated with royal couples riding winged beasts – horses, gryphons, buffalo and elephants – that are clearly distant Indian cousins of those in the great imperial Persian capital of Persepolis."
Seven years ago I paid my first visit to the extraordinary 1stC BCE Bhaja caves- less well known than Ajanta, but no less fascinating, with original wooden features still in place. I wrote this @FTLifeArts piece soon after
"Open to the environment at one end, and entered by a magnificent 9m-tall horseshoe-arch, it still miraculously preserves its ancient wooden roof beams, like the wrecked keel of a prehistoric ark...."
"These wooden shards crown one of the oldest rooms in the world: a ribbed chaitya hall lined with tapering octagonal columns, ending in a rounded apse that encloses the perfect dome of a tall stone stupa."
One last set of Pallava masterpieces from the exquisite Kailashanatha Temple of Rajasimha Pallava dating from 685 CE
The sculptures of the north wall-
L- The Goddess Tripura-bhairavi
Middle- Tripurantaka or Tripurari Shiva, depicted with four arms wielding a bow and arrow
R- Durga on her lion (I think...)
Detail of the Goddess Tripura-bhairavi
North wall, Kailashanatha Temple
Kanchipuram