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Adults: Children:. Single: Double: Triple:. Indian Resident Non Indian Resident. India Travel Guide. Vacations in India. Furthermore, it was the residential area for superior members of the society. There are two halls inside, one with a row of cells on each side and another without any cell.
It is the largest one among the group. This hall has cells each on its three sides and a stupa at the rear end. Moreover, the pillars are decorated bracket capitals depicting various kinds of figures mostly animals some with riders and some without.
A row of nine seated Buddhas and chaitya windows decorate its T-shaped beam. The purpose of these terminals was to house river Goddesses, during the early Gupta period.
The bottom of the doorjambs also has Ganga and Jamuna on either sides. There are many murals on the walls including the paintings of Bodhisattva Padmapani, Mushroom etc.
Two rows of pillars divide the hall into 3 passages.. The cave has a hall with five cells. Three of these are in the rear end of the hall.
The restored paintings are now in the Archaeological Museum in Gwalior, and in the on-site museum in Bagh. Inside Bagh Museum information panels explain the conservation efforts. In addition to Boddhisatva Padmapani, and a sequence of female musicians and their stories in captions, etc. Bhag caves are located at a distance of around 97 km from Dhar and hence, are easily accessible by road.
A row of pillars covers the front of these caves but they are clearly recent, maybe replacing the older ones from earlier times. The texture on the rock face shows the water levels it must have seen over the ages.
Inside, the water was still dripping everywhere in the cave. In these caves, some of the pillars and one wall have some remains of the paintings. Paintings on the walls are colorful, while those on the pillars are in black and white and have only geometric shapes. Honestly, I have never seen geometric shapes inside the ancient Indian caves and these looked like a recent work to me. There was no one to confirm or oppose this though. Stupa here too was in a Chaitya Griha like a room at the back again was touching the ceiling.
Stupas at Bagh caves are narrow and tall, with a hexagonal bottom and a spherical top, while those at Ajanta or Sanchi are more like inverted semi-hemisphere. Many of the smaller rooms around the main hall are empty. These could be meditation caves or maybe they had some images that have been removed.
Cave 4 is sometimes called the Rang Mahal for its colorful paintings. This is a narrow long cave with two rows of pillars facing each other. Pillars dominate the space again. In this cave, I saw an underground water channel.
I wonder where it links to, and if it is an old channel or a recently made one. There are 3 more caved numbered but due to their collapse, it is not possible to see them. As you come down from the caves and cross the Bhagini river, you would see a small museum housed in a simple concrete building. Inside, there are original paintings taken from the walls of the caves and preserved. Some more paintings are in the Archaeological Museum at Gwalior.
The same technique and similar colors have been used at Ajanta. The boards in English and Hindi explain the paintings on display with a small note on the painting technique. I could see Bodhisattva Padmapani, geometric patterns, Jataka tales like Vidura Pandita Jataka, flora and fauna paintings. It would have been great if a guide could explain these ancient and exquisite paintings.
A rust-red tone dominates the Bagh paintings here. I wish there was some documentation of the caves available at the site or at the site museum. The guide who came with us from Mandu did not know anything beyond the fact that these are Buddhist caves. The local guides were not available. The ticket counter had no booklet. Museum had signs explaining the paintings displayed there but no booklet to take back.
Lighting inside caves is almost not there. Most people were using their mobile torch lights to navigate the uneven surface of the caves. In the town of Bagh, on a small hillock stands the temple of Bagheshwari Devi — the Gram Devi of town. We had our lunch next to it at the shop of Ganpat Halwai. Food was as close to home-cooked food as it can be. On our way to Bagh, we passed by a lot of cotton fields, full of cotton, ready to be plucked.
In fact, cotton was being plucked everywhere and transported to the Mandi close by. It was a pleasure to visit a field, meet the cotton farmers and pluck a bit of cotton with them.
You feel the cotton seed inside the cotton that must be taken out before you can make a yarn out of it, which is then woven to make a fabric. While I was keen on caves and its paintings, having studied about them, my fellow travelers were keen on meeting the block printers of Bagh. We expected to meet some local weavers but it seems there are not many of them around.
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