We could see why Cave 6 might have been “afraid of 7.” It seemed the work, perhaps, of lay sculptors rather than monks, because it overflows with lush carvings: dancing dwarves play musical instruments; busty goddesses disport themselves, every detail of their clothing, ornaments, and headdresses rendered with minute precision; on one wall, a student toils at a desk, oblivious to temptation. Cave 10 is spectacular: with its vaulted arches and intricate interior carvings; it reminded the boys of a Roman basilica, except that it had been hewn entirely out of a rocky hillside, and there are no gelati on sale outside.
“You mean they didn't actually carry a single stone into the cave?” Ishaan asked incredulously. They didn't. Though the temples are referred to as caves, they are the work of men, hammering and chiseling diligently away for centuries, creating principally two kinds of structures — monasteries, or viharas, and halls of worship, or chaityas. Their method required great technical expertise, aesthetic dexterity, and infinite patience. The monks seem to have marked an outline on the surface of the hill and dug downward, cutting away the rock to create the entrances, columns, and chambers. Imagine the drama of it, turning mountain faces into works of art, sanctuaries, temples; year after year, working only with natural light, the metronomic poetry of hammer and chisel against rock. It is possible to imagine one set of sculptors working dexterously on the ceilings while muscular excavators hacked away beneath them to reach the floor. The artists and painters must have followed, though age, moisture, and vandalism have left little trace of their work in Ellora.
One remarkable feat of skillful labor is Cave 12, a three-storied edifice carved in the seventh century to serve as a hostel for the monks. Each “room” cut into the rock has a carved stone bed for the monk to sleep on, complete with stone pillow, and a niche cut into the wall for his lamp. To complete the dormitory effect, there is a room for an attendant on each floor. “Look,” said our guide, Srikant, pointing to a rectangular depression in the stone, “they even had a notice board.” Ishaan and Kanishk, overwhelmed by the sense that they were in a two-thousand-year-old boarding school, refused to climb to the headmaster's floor. Minu and I followed our guide to the top level, where a row of seven meditating Buddhas sits alongside another row of seven who have already attained enlightenment, as attested to by the stone umbrellas over their beatific heads. Here, too, are faded remnants of paintings on the ceiling, a faint hint of what is to come in Ajanta.
The Hindu Cave 16 goes one better: it is the largest monolithic carving in the world, a gigantic temple called Kailash, after the god Shiva's mountain abode, which took eight hundred workmen a century and a half to complete and is twice the size of the Parthenon. The sculptors’ vision was that of a flying chariot, and the cave is carved like one. It is embellished with vivid statuary depicting various Hindu legends, a particularly astonishing piece being that of the goddess Durga slaying the demon Mahishasura amid a stone flurry of flailing arms and weapons. This was the sort of authenticity missing in the ersatz idol at Daulatabad.
“Hey, Dad,” said Kanishk irreverently, “the Great Indian Novel.” He had just finished reading my book of that name, a reinvention of the ancient Mahabharata epic as a twentieth-century political satire, and was pointing to a series of friezes bringing episodes of the epic to life on the temple's plinth. Then the rain came again, and we sheltered under one of Kailash's many ribbed cupolas, marveling at the sheer scale of the architectural achievement. In a curiously modern touch, the sculptors have carved a statue outside of their principal donor, King Krishna Raya II of the Rashtrakuta dynasty, his palm open in generous giving. Other contemporary resonances echoed in statues of Shiva playing a game of dice with his consort Parvati, and one of their wedding, with Parvati as a nervous bride, her head bent in modesty, shyly placing one foot against the other as she receives her husband.
We ate our picnic lunch at a spot where Cave 29 overlooks a waterfall. There was something incongruous about biting into sandwiches a few feet away from pillars that had been carved laboriously a thousand years before sandwiches were invented by an impatient earl. We sat on an ancient ledge and looked out to where the water cascaded sudden and silvery from the hillside like a gasp. When the food was finished and we tried to venture farther into the cave, we found it had been cut so deeply into the hill that no sunlight ever reached its deepest interior. The back of the cave smelled strongly of the droppings of bats, who whirled furiously past us in the dark.
We ended our tour of Ellora at the massive double-storied Jain Indrasabha, Cave 32, a relatively late construction (eleventh century) notable for more than one statue of Siddhayika, a female attendant of the founder of the Jain faith, Mahavira. An exquisitely carved lotus on the ceiling caught our eye. And then I couldn't resist telling Minu we could have done without the film at Daulatabad after all. For there, in stone, was a yakshi (a demoness) sitting on a lion under a mango tree, for all the world like the pair Kanishk and I had left behind on our trudge up to the top of the fort. It was a striking piece of work, for the ripe beauty of the doe-eyed woman seemed at odds with the legendary asceticism of the Jain faith. But the caves were carved in lushly prosperous times, and asceticism always thrives better in penury.
Ellora and the medieval distractions on our way prepared us well for the wonder that is Ajanta. We woke a little earlier on the second day, since the sixty-five-mile journey from Aurangabad takes almost two hours by road, and we had a flight to catch back to Bombay at the end of the day. The long trip provided my sons the opportunity to ask why questions: Why were the caves created here, Ishaan asked, and Why, Kanishk added, in this form? Part of the answer lay in political stability: the area was ruled by two enlightened dynasties, the Satavahanas and the Vakatakas, during the first eight hundred years of the Christian era, a period of great prosperity and growth during which art and culture flourished under royal patronage. The second reason is more functionaclass="underline" the basalt rock of the Deccan plateau proved ideal for the sculptors, solid but easy to hew, which is why there are other examples of rock-cut caves scattered throughout the area, including in Aurangabad itself.
Ajanta looks more like an organized tourist destination. As soon as we parked, we were inundated with hawkers offering tchotchkes with the most tenuous connection to the caves we had come to see. Young boys thrust mineralized chunks of rock into our hands as free gifts to entice us into their shops. We fled, but were drawn up short at a paved ascent that curved upward from the parking lot to the caves. A wiry porter emerged to carry our possessions for us — eighty rupees (two dollars) for the entire duration of our visit. I accepted with alacrity, since the Taj Residency appeared to have given us an even more generous supply of bottled drinks than on the previous day. Two more individuals appeared, looking as if a couple of the larger sculptures had come to life. They were palanquin bearers, enterprising young men ready to carry the less energetic visitor up to the caves in a stuffed chair mounted on two long poles. Minu looked wistfully at the palanquin, but the shocked disapproval of our sons sent her off, abashed. (“They need the work,” she muttered as she reluctantly turned away. “It's their livelihood.”) But the ascent was less arduous than at Daulatabad Fort, and the palanquins were not missed.
There weren't enough foreigners around to remind us that we were tourists, but the pressure of tourism is felt more keenly at Ajanta than at Ellora: the four main caves admit only forty visitors at a time, for a maximum of fifteen minutes. It was just as well that we were there in the relatively unpopular monsoon, for we found an intimidating queue only at one cave, to which we were able to return later. For years, attendants used to stand outside the caves with large mirrors to reflect the sunlight onto the art within, but today Ajanta employs a “lighting attendant” in selected caves, whose job it is to shine a large electric lamp upon certain paintings pointed out by your guide.