THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 65
It is evident here that the English translator — not
having in his own mind the thing his author was
describing — has rendered the text inaccurately. If
we read, " its lofty chaityas and deep viharas at
their sides," the statement immediately becomes
luminous. Similarly, when later we are told that
the great vihara is about 100 feet high, and the
stone figure of Buddha in the middle 70 feet high,
while above is a canopy of seven stages, towering
upwards, apparently without support,^ it is evident
that the great Chinese traveller is speaking of no
vihara, but of the principal chaitya of his own day
(Nineteen or Twenty-six ?), and that the stone
figure he describes is really the dagoba it contains.
The first royal patronage extended to Ajanta must have been given at or soon after the time of Asoka, when the chaitya known as Cave Nine and the vihara numbered Twelve were built. Every one who takes up the study of ancient sites in India finds his own indications of age. At Sanchi the gradual modifications in the pictorial treatment of the Asokan rail give us a chronological scale which enables us to distinguish with absolute cer- tainty no less than four different periods of building and sculpture. Here at Ajanta the time-unit that serves us from the first is the chaitya-fagade ornament taken in conjunction with the Asokan rail. It would appear that the domestic architecture of the age was characterised by the rounded roof
1 Quoted by R. C. UuU in Civilisation in Ancient India, ii. pp. 156-7.
