Ajanta Caves

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A view of the outside of the Ajanta caves in 2023.

The Ajanta Caves are a series of 29 Buddhist cave temples in Maharashtra, India. The caves are a World Heritage site. Encompassing both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, they represent some of the best masterpieces of Buddhist art in India. The caves “…numbered in an arbitrary sequence, are laid out in a great arc cut by the curving course of the Waghora river.”(p1, Spink)

The caves were used as prayer halls by Buddhist monks for about seven centuries until suddenly the monks disappeared and the caves were all that was left. Several theories exist as to why the caves had been abandoned. The most prominent and perhaps the most probable reason was the rise of Hinduism in the region. The caves were an accidental discovery made by a group of British soldiers in 1819.

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