File:Footfalls of Indian history (1915) (14783709665).jpg

Identifier: footfallsofindia00niveuoft (find matches)
Title: Footfalls of Indian history
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Nivedita, Sister, 1867-1911
Subjects: India -- Description and travel India -- Religion Ajanta Caves (India)
Publisher: London : Longmans Green
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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the Jatakas the interest of the Buddhistworld. It formed the great romance of the faith.The same efforts had been made and as great workdone in many other cases, but here was a countryso small that the effort told. The whole civilisationyielded with enthusiasm to the stream of impulsethat came to it from the home-land of its sovereigns. The Sacred Tree, with the prince Mahindo and the > princess Sanghamitta, had formed an embassy ofstate of which any country might be proud. Andthe connection thus made had been maintained.We may imagine, if we please, that there werestudents from Ceylon here in the Sangharama ofAjanta. Kings and nobles would doubtless sendtheir sons to the monasteries for education, evenas is still done in the villages of Burma and Japan.The East was early literary in her standards ofculture, and the fact that monastic instructionwould no way have benefited a Norman baronneed not make us suppose that the ministers andsovereigns of India, early in the Christian era,
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Mother and Child. From Drawing by Nanda Lai Bose of the Frescopainting at Ajanta. THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF A J ANT A 133 boasted an equally haughty illiteracy. The wholeaspect of the caves, with the viharas containing theshrine of the Great Guru, tells us of the develop-ment which their functions had undergone, frombeing simple bhikshugrihas to organised colleges,under the single rulership of the abbot of Ajanta.Hiouen Tsang was only one out of a stream offoreign guests who came to the abbey to giveknowledge or to gather it. And we must, if wewould see truly, people its dark aisles and gloomyshadows with voices and forms of many nation-alities from widely distant parts of the earth. InCave One is an historical painting of the PersianEmbassy which was sent by Khusru II toPulakesin I about A.D. 626. The cave I myself like least is Number Two.Here we have side-chapels containing statues ofkings and queens or it may be pious patrons ofless exalted rank, in one case with a child. Thepainting a

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