THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 129
we return to the nave, and, again looking at the forms on the pillar-faces, let ourselves dream for a moment, till we seem to hear the deep Adoramus with which they fill the air around us.
This silent throng of painted worshippers suggests to the mind's eye the worship itself that once filled the little cathedral chapel. We see the procession of monks that must have entered at one door, made pradakshina about the altar, and gone out on the other side. We see the lights that they carried, the incense they waved, the prostrations they made, and the silent congregation of lay-folk and students who may have looked on them from the back of the nave, as even now at a Hindu arati one may kneel apart and watch. We hear the chanting of the monks as the incense was swung, and we realise the problem that Buddhism had to solve in giving solemnity and impressiveness to a worship denuded of the splendours and significance of sacrifice. It must have been this consciousness that led to the rapid organisation of a ritual whose elements were all indeed derived from the Vedic, but which was in its entirety the most character- istic and organic expression of democratic religion that the world had ever seen. The history of Christian worship has not yet been written, but it is open to us to believe that when it is, its debt to the chaityas will be found greater than is now suspected.
The host of saints and apostles brings us face to face with another thought. We see how much
