Kathmandu: As the world celebrated the 2,551st birth anniversary of the Buddha on Wednesday, Nepal, his birthplace, had an additional reason to rejoice—the discovery of an ancient cave—an older Ajanta, with exquisite wall paintings, in its northernmost tip jutting into Tibet.
   A team of scholars and climbers stumbled upon the treasure trove last month during a search for historic caves said to be abounding in the virtually uninhabited tract of frozen land, preserved by the icy temperatures and untouched for millennia.
   Funded by adventure gear-maker North Face and a US-based production house, the expedition discovered a partly collapsed enclave containing a mural of 55 panels depicting the life of the Buddha. The paintings are highly evocative of Ajanta, says art conservator Luigi Fieni, referring to the first known Buddhist cave art dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. Fieni has been camping in Mustang, the remote mountainous district that was once a rich and powerful Tibetan kingdom dominating the trans-Himalayan trade between India and Tibet.

   The art, he says, is executed in a style not seen in Mustang. Besides, they depict animals like the deer, leopard and tiger which are not found in Mustang, giving rise to the theory that either the painters were Indians or people familiar with Indian techniques and life in sub-tropical regions.
   The enclave could have been another Nalanda. American author and climber Broughton Coburn, who was part of the expedition, says probably one high cave in the enclave was reserved for Buddhist teachings.

OBJETS D’ART

Cave fresco discovered by miracle, says scholar
Kathmandu: The wall paintings in the ancient cave, being described as an older Ajanta, discovered by scholars and climbers at Mustang in Nepal show various figures, both male and female, making offerings to high lamas and teachers. Other nearby caves have mounds of manuscripts in ancient Tibetan script which, when deciphered, could yield a wealth of knowledge on Tibetan forms of Buddhism and probably on the history of Tibet, Mustang and even Nepal and India.
   “We discovered the cave by a miracle,’’ says Fieni. And it must have been nothing less than a miracle that the expedition happened to catch up with a shepherd who had been inside the cave as a boy of eight. To mark his discovery,
he had scratched his name on the wall and then forgotten all about it. For nearly two decades after that, probably no one else found the cave.
   “When we arrived in the area and told the villagers what we were looking for, the boy, now a young man, remembered his cave. It was a miracle that he could still find his way to it,’’ said Coburn.
   The royal family of Mustang, descendants of the powerful kings, is still around and the expedition and its findings have been blessed by its former king, Jigme Bista. “We are glad the caves are in an inaccessible place and unlikely to be discovered (by marauders),’’ said Coburn. The plan now is to conduct further research and documentation and ask Nepal to protect and preserve them.
   That could be a difficult task. Nepal lacks funds and has not been able to protect national treasures already unearthed. There has been a spate of thefts in Nepal’s temples, including the famed Pashupatinath, with priceless artworks finding way into the international black market.

via TOI