CHAP. VI. BAGH. 197 however, was made by the Bombay Government to recover, as far as possible, this loss, and the publication of Mr Griffiths' work on a portion of the results is a splendid addition to our materials. BAGH. At a distance of about 1 50 miles a little west of north from Ajanta, and 30 miles west of Mandu, near a village of the name of Bagh, in Malwa, there exists a series of viharas only little less interesting than the later series at Ajanta They are situated in a secluded ravine in the side of the range of hills that bounds the valley of the Narbada on the north and were first visited or at least first described by Lieutenant Dangerfield, in the second volume of the ' Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay' (1818). They have since been described more in detail by Dr. Impey in the fifth volume of the ' Journal Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society ' (1854). Unfortunately the plates that were to accompany that paper were not published with it, but from them and from his paper the principal details that follow have been gleaned. The series consists of eight or nine viharas, some of them of the largest class, but no chaitya hall, nor does any excavation of that class seem ever to have been attempted here. On the other hand, the larger viharas seem to have had a Sala or schoolroom attached to them, which may also have been employed, as Dr. Impey suggested, for religious service ; but, like the Darbar cave at Kanheri, it was more probably a Dharmajala or refectory. The fact, however, that the sanctu- aries of the viharas generally have a dagaba in them, instead of an image of Buddha, points to a distinction which may hereafter prove of value : possibly they belonged to a Hinayana tunately destroyed by fire in 1866 no photographs or coloured copies of them having been secured. Mr. Fergusson and the editor then called the attention of Government to the urgency of recopy- ing what still remained for visitors and the bats had destroyed much during the previous twenty or thirty years. Finally in 1872 a modest subsidy was provided to employ Mr. John Griffiths, of the Bombay Art School, with some of his students, to copy what was left. With a break of three years, this grant was re- newed till 1885, after which the publica- tion of the results was urged, but delayed ; and again, out of 335 copies, 163 were destroyed and others damaged by a fire in South Kensington Museum, where they had been placed. Mr. Griffiths subse- quently edited for Government a selection of the results, ' The Paintings in the Buddhist Cave Temples at Ajanta,' 1896, in two large folio volumes containing 156 plates, besides illustrations in the text. A somewhat detailed account of the paintings was first published in ' Notes on the Bauddha Rock-Temples of Ajanta : their Paintings and Sculptures' by the editor (Bombay, 1879), which was repro- duced with some trifling verbal changes, in the ' Bombay Gazetteer of Khandesh' (1880), pp. 496-574; and appeared again, rearranged, in the 'Aurangabad Gazetteer' (1884), pp. 430-506. See also 'Cave Temples,' pp. 284-288, 291, 306-307, 310-315, and 326-336, and plates 29-43.
