Here I present: Sheila L. Weiner, “AJANTA: Its Place in Buddhist Art”, 1977, PART TWO (2). Architecture is the art topic of the Shelia L. Weiner book.
INTRODUCTION.
India is the place of the earliest “residential universities” in the world. Monastic universities of the dharmic faiths (Buddhist and Hindu) in ancient times were “residential universities “ with campus for scholars and students. Ajanta is one such “monastic residential university”, and the campus is the feature image of this blog post.
The Ajanta Caves are 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the second century BCE to about 480 CE in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in India.
Taxila University (600 BC – 500 AD) of Punjab was the earliest universities in the entire world. Nalanda University (427 AD – 1202 AD) was extension of the Buddhist universities teaching up to nearly the time of Marco Polo (1254-1324).
Pushpagiri University founded 200 BC was an Indian university; and, Pushpagiri and Taxila universities existed at the same time as Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum.
Chanakya चाणक्य (375 BC – 283 BC) scholar at Taxila University instructions of Chandragupta Maurya, caused his grandson, Ashoka, to found Buddhism as the religion of the Mauryan Empire.
