THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 71
of the Vakataka princes known as Varahadeva ; Caves Seventeen, Eighteen, and Nineteen by a minister of a tributary sovereign or great noble called Aditya ; Cave Twenty by a man of evident wealth and distinction, whose name is Upendra Gupta ; and the chaitya hall, Cave Twenty-six, by the abbot Buddha Bhadra with the special assistance of his subordinate Dharmadatta and his own disciple Bhadra Bandhu.
Throughout the west country it was long fashionable, even for houses that were themselves devoted to Shiva or to Vishnu, to make these benefactions to the Buddha friars. And as time went on it became customary to add an inscription, with the prayer that the merit of the act might redound to the benefit first of the father and mother of the donor, and then of all living beings — a dedication that is still common amongst certain Buddhist peoples.
From Caves Sixteen and Seventeen, then, it can hardly be doubted that the great power within whose territory Ajanta lay was that of the Vakataka princes, whose sway is supposed on other grounds to have covered a large part of Central India, from the end of the third till the middle of the sixth centuries, their dynasty having been powerful enough to take a queen from the family of the great Chandra Gupta of Pataliputra, between A.D. 420 and 490.^
1 It is absurd to suppose that " the great king of kings, Devagupta," has any other meaning.
