Crux Of The Matter | Journey On 'The Golden Road' | Ancient India Transformed World | News18

When historian William Dalrymple visited the Ajanta Caves in Aurangabad for the first time in a decade in 2014, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had just completed some conservation work in Caves 9 and 10 of the historic site, including undoing some of the damage from a 1920s conservation effort when an Italian restorer had put shellac on the walls.

"Shellac is a varnish which, it turned out, in the Indian environment attracted dust, particularly batshit, and the whole caves blacked out. So they were never photographed," says Dalrymple, as we speak at a Mehrauli cafe on a mid-October morning. "Caves 9 and 10 are 150-100 BC, so they're a full 600, if not 700, years older than the other caves. And they contain the oldest murals in Buddhist art," Dalrymple adds.

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