They are approached from Fardapur, a small town at the foot of the ghāṭ, and about three and a half miles north-east from them. They are excavated in the face of an almost perpendicular scarp of rock, about 250 feet high, sweeping round in a curve of fully a semicircle, and forming the north or outer side of a wild secluded ravine, down which comes a small stream.

Above the caves the valley terminates abruptly in a waterfall of seven leaps, known as the sāt kuṇḍ, the lower of which may be from 70 to 80 feet high, and the others 00 feet more.

The caves extend about 600 yards from east to west round the concave wall of amygdaloid trap that hems in the stream on its north or left side, and vary in elevation from about 35 to 00 feet above the bed of the torrent, the lowest being about a third of the arc from the east end.

The whole of the caves have been numbered... commencing from the east or outer end, and terminating at the inner extremity by the caves furthest up the ravine. This enumeration, it will be understood, is wholly without reference to either the age or purpose of the caves, but wholly for convenience of description. The oldest are the lowest down in the rock, and practically near the centre, being numbers 8 to 13, from which group they radiate right and left, to no. 1 on the one hand, 29 on the other...

In some respects the series of caves at Ajaṇṭā is more complete and more interesting than any other in India. All the caves there belong exclusively to the Buddhist religion without any admixture either from the Hindu or Jaina forms of faith, and they extend through the whole period during which Buddhism prevailed as a dominant religion in that country.

Two of them, a Chaitya cave and a vihāra, 9 and 8, certainly belong to the second century before Christ, and two others, No. 26, a chaitya at one end of the series, and No. 1, a vihāra at the other end, were certainly not finished in the middle of the seventh century, when Buddhism was tottering to its fall.

Between these two periods, the 29 caves found here are spread tolerably evenly over a period of more than eight centuries, with only a break, which occurs, not only here, but everywhere, between the early and Mahāyāna forms of faith. Five or six caves at Ajaṇṭā belong to the former school, and consequently to the first great division into which we have classed these monuments. The remaining 23 belong as distinctly to the second division, and possess all the imagery and exuberance of the latter school.

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