schools. However, very little is known about the use or
ritual and educational functions of the collections dur-
ing early times. Because of their status as scriptural
authority, quotations from the sutras are numerous in
the COMMENTARIAL LITERATUREof the various schools.
Certain sutras also continued to be transmitted indi-
vidually or in fixed selections designed for specific re-
ligious purposes, and it appears that such texts played
a much more important role in the life of Buddhists
than the complete collections. Not all the sutras were
collected as Agamas/Nikayas; the MAHAYANAsutras,
for instance, never came to be included in such a clas-
sification scheme.
See also:Buddhavacana (Word of the Buddha); Pali,
Buddhist Literature in; Sanskrit, Buddhist Literature
in; Scripture
Bibliography
Hinüber, Oskar von. A Handbook of Pali Literature.Berlin and
New York: de Gruyter, 1996.
Lamotte, Étienne. History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins
to the Saka Era(1958), tr. Sara Webb-Boin. Louvain-la-Neuve,
Belgium: Université catholique de Louvain, Institut orien-
taliste, 1988.
Mayeda, Egaku. “Japanese Studies on the School of the Chinese
Agamas.” In Zur Schulzugehörigkeit von Werken der
Hlnayana-Literatur,2 vols., ed. Heinz Bechert. Göttingen,
Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1985–1987.
Mizuno, Kogen. Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Trans-
mission.Tokyo: Kosei, 1982.
JENS-UWEHARTMANNAJANTA
Carved into a precipitous gorge in northern Maha-
rashtra, Ajanta’s thirty Buddhist cave monasteries
were excavated in two phases. The three finished
S ́atavahana caves (ca. first century C.E.) typify con-
temporaneous and earlier Western Indic cave monas-
teries. Ajanta’s other caves all date to the Vakataka
emperor Harisena’s reign (ca. 460–480 C.E.). The
S ́atavahana and Vakataka excavations reveal differ-
ences in donorship, layout, and design.
Containing numerous and generally terse Prakrit
inscriptions, the earlier caves evidence a collective and
socially eclectic pattern of patronage. Most of the San-
skrit Vakataka donative inscriptions are later intru-
sions into abandoned caves. Of the four programmatic
inscriptions, three are lengthy eulogies in verse. They
record that individual members of the ruling elites do-
nated one or more caves in their entirety, giving them
to the Buddha as his residence rather than to the three
jewels or the SAN ̇GHAas theretofore.Differences in site layout and cave design reflect
these changes. Both phases manifest two architectural
types based on structural wooden prototypes. Ajanta’s
worship halls share apsidal plans, caitya windows,
barrel-vaulted roofs, and monumental STUPAs, while
differing in the nature and amount of their painting
and sculpture. Repeated buddha figures and joyous
worshipers throng the Vakataka stupa halls. Most sig-
nificant is the hieratically scaled buddha who, as it
were, emerges from each central stupa. Framed within
an architectural structure, these active buddhas trans-
form the later stupa halls into gandhakutls,the Bud-
dha’s personal residences.Early viharas (residential caves) typically take the
form of large flat-roofed quadrangular rooms without
pillars. Doorways leading to cells punctuate their
sparsely decorated interior walls. The Vakataka donors
added internal pillars, a colonnaded porch, and rich
decorations in relief and paint onto this basic plan. A
rear cell located immediately opposite the main door-
way was expanded into an ornate pillared antecham-
ber with a large internal cell. Tenanted by a monolithic
statue of the Buddha preaching from a cosmic throne,
this cell is (1) the gandhakutlwhere the Buddha resides
as the spiritual and administrative head of his monks,
and (2) the shrine where he is worshiped.These innovations speak to differences in Buddhist
practice and belief. Viharas with shrines signal a de-
parture from the earlier centralization of public wor-
ship, when the only shrines were stupa halls. In the
early phase, the most potent manifestation of the Bud-
dha’s living presence was the central stupa that em-
bodied his body relics ( ́ars lra); at Vakataka Ajanta, the
most potent manifestation was the monumental Bud-
dha image dwelling in his gandhakutl.Profuse orna-
mentation transformed relatively austere monasteries
into richly jeweled cave palaces atop a cosmic moun-
tain, appropriate residences for the Vakataka Buddha,
who, as the Emperor of Ascetics, was the prime cos-
mic being. The belief in and practice of the bodhisattva
PATHevidenced in caves 17 and 26 simultaneously re-
veal his imitable and human aspects. Vakataka Ajanta’s
fabled narratives participated in these changes. Char-
acterized by an idealized naturalism that representsAJANTA