Ajanta ( Marath. अजिंठा लेणी ) is a predominantly Buddhist temple - monastery cave complex in India in the state of Maharashtra .
It is a cliff in the form of a horseshoe with 29 caves. They are divided into two main types: tea - houses (prayer rooms, oblong in plan, with two rows of pillars, an apse at the end) and vihara (square in plan of halls, surrounded on three sides by cells or shrines with Buddha statues, have a portico terrace at the entrance ) - a hostel of Buddhist monks.
The cave mural is world famous. The painting, preserved in fragments, is an illustration of Buddhist legends and myths , but in essence it reveals a panorama of social life in all its diversity.
Temples were carved in the rocks for several centuries - from the 1st century BC. e. to the 7th century AD e. (the true heyday of painting falls on the period of V-VI centuries) [1] [2] . The most intensive construction was carried out at the end of the 5th –First half of the 6th century under the king of the powerful Dravidian dynasty Wakatakov Harishene ( 475-500 years ) [3] , ruler of the Dean and a number of regions of Western India [3] . At this time, the most advanced examples of sculptures and murals of Ajanta were created [4]
In the 13th century, Buddhism loses its significance in India . The monks, whose number had fallen significantly by this time, gradually left Ajanta. In 1983, the temple complex "Ajanta" was declared a World Heritage Site .
 | UNESCO World Heritage Property 242 Russian • English • fr. |
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- Ajanta Cave Temples
Notes
- ↑ Tyulyaev S.I. Chapter VIII. Ajanta painting, painting of caves of the Gupta art period of 4-7 centuries // Art of India. III millennium BC e. - VII century AD e. / Under. ed. E. N. Galkina. - M .: Art, 1988. - S. 249-250.
- ↑ Ajanta / E. A. Serdyuk // Big Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. ed. Yu.S. Osipov . - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2004—2017.
- ↑ 1 2 Bongard-Levin G.M., Ilyin G.F. Chapter XIX. South India // India in antiquity. - M .: Nauka, 1985 .-- S. 370.
- ↑ Tyulyaev S.I. Chapter VIII. Ajanta painting, painting of caves of the Gupta art period of 4-7 centuries // Art of India. III millennium BC e. - VII century AD e. / Under. ed. E. N. Galkina. - M .: Art, 1988 .-- S. 250.