INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Early Mahayana Caves in Western Deccan                                                                                                                                      

Speaker:  Prof Y.S. Alone, Professor in Visual Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University who has written extensively on Buddhist caves, on popular neo-Buddhist visual culture, a critic of modern Indian art, and an interpretative framework of Dr. Ambedkar and social sciences. His book 'Early Buddhist Caves of Western India' was published in 2016 and reprinted in 2019. 

Chair: Prof. Seema Bawa, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Dept. of History, University of Delhi

Often the Mahayana phase in the western Deccan is dated to the fifth century CE, this assumption has dominated our understanding for a long time. The lecture contests this assumption and traces the early Mahayana phase in the western Deccan through inscriptional and visual evidence observed in important cave sites such as Ajanta, Kanheri, Kondivite, Panhale-Kaji and Mahad.