72 Bajendrakila Mitra —On Representations in the Ajantd Caves. [No. 1, 
by no means such as to justify the assumption that they had been designed 
from foreign models. In the very affecting picture of the death of a lady 
of rank in Cave No. XVI, the bodices shown on some of the maid-servants 
engaged in grinding corn in hand-mills, are quite unlike the jackets of the 
Bactrian women. 
In an Indian scene in Cave No. I, where a large number of sable 
beauties are exhibited, there is a figure seated cross-legged, whose dark 
features, punchy belly and style of sitting, leave no doubt in my mind of his 
nationality; and he is dressed in a dhuti which leaves a part of his thigh 
exposed, and a mirzdi of flowered muslin which is thoroughly Indian, and the 
like of it has nowhere been seen out of India. (See plate V, fig. 2.) The 
'mirzdi is in use by the Hindus to this day all over northern India, and its 
make seems not to have changed in the least since the time of the fresco. 
It is not my intention to enter into a discussion here as to the date 
of the Ajanta Caves. The late Dr. Wilson of Bombay took them 
to extend from the third or second century before, to the fifth or sixth cen¬ 
tury after, Christ.* Mr. Burgess, after a careful study of the Caves, states 
“ that the oldest of them cannot be later than the second century before the 
Christian era.” Long before him Mr. Fergusson came to the same conclusion 
in his ‘ llock-cut Caves of India,’ and in his ‘ History of Eastern Architec¬ 
ture’ remarked that Cave No. XII, “the facade of which so much resembles 
that of the Nasik Chaitya (B. C. 129), cannot he far off in date” (p. 122). 
The latest are supposed to be of the 5th or 6th century. Accepting 
this opinion for my guide, and there is not much to show that it is untenable, 
and bearing in mind that Cave No. I is one of the largest and richest in paint¬ 
ings which long preceded sculpture, I may fairly come to the conclusion that 
the scenes I have described above represent phases of Indian life from 
eighteen hundred to two thousand years ago. 
* Journal, Bombay As. Soc., Ill, p. 73. 
