THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 83
and exclusively Indian. At the same time I think it must be the "great vihara " of Hiouen Tsang, which he describes as about 100 feet high, while in the midst is a stone figure of Buddha about 70 feet high, and above this a stone canopy of seven stages, towering upwards apparently without any support. Making allowance for faulty translation in regard to terms, which by those who have seen the caves are used with technical rigidity, this may offer a fair description of the cave as it would appear to one who saw it in the plenitude of its use and beauty. If this cave were, as I think, excavated about the year a.d. 600, then when the Chinese traveller visited the abbey in the middle of the century it would be the central place of worship and one of the main features of interest at Ajanta. But there is at least one other synchronism of the greatest significance to be observed in reference to 'Cave Nineteen. This is the affinity of the treatment of Buddha in its sculptures to those of Borobuddor in Java. It is as if the style were only making its first appear- ance. There is the same idea of costume, and the standing Buddhas have something like the same grace of attitude and gentleness of demeanour, but the process of idealising has not yet been carried to its highest pitch in this kind. There is in the Javanese Buddhas, as revealed in Mr. Havell's photographs of them, an ethereal remote- ness with which these do not quite compete. Yet here is the promise of it. And the great bas-relief
