William Simpson 1823-1899

Created by man and cut into the steep face of a horseshoe shaped hillside, the thirty caves at Ajanta are  located about 100 miles northeast of Aurangabad. They were continuously used or lived in from 200 BC to about AD 650 and over the years they served as monastic retreats for Buddhist monks, scholars, pupils and artists.  They were rediscovered in 1819 by a British captain, John Smith, and his soldiers who were on a hunting expedition and unexpectedly found them.  Inside they discovered great masterpieces of Buddhist religious art and many of the walls and ceilings were painted with scenes depicting the life of the Buddha and his many incarnations. The 'Chaitya' caves, as depicted in the present watercolour, were places of worship. Other caves, however, were 'Viharas' and used as dwelling places for the monks.

Simpson wrote of the caves in his autobiography 'From Ellora I went to Ajunta, where the caves are all Buddhist. The sketching of these caves, as well as temples, topes, &c., gave me a large amount of knowledge in detail of Indian architecture, and led me to study it still further afterwards'. (William Simpson, The Autobiography of William Simpson, R.I. (Crimean Simpson), T. Fisher Unwin, 1903, p. 170).