he laboured assiduously to promote the economic and industrial development of the state, and proved an able assistant to the Maharaja Chamarajendra. By means of railway, irrigation and mining works, he added greatly to the wealth of the state, and put it on a sound financial footing. He retired in 1900, was made K.C.S.I. in 1893 and died on the 13th of September 1901.
AIYAR, SIR TIRUVARUR MUTUSWAMY (1832–1895), native Indian judge of the high court of Madras, was born of poor parents in the village of Vuchuwadi, near Tanjore, on the 28th of January 1832. His widowed mother was forced by poverty to remove with Mutuswamy and his brother to Tiruvarar, where the former learnt Tamil, and soon set to work under the village accountant at a monthly salary of one rupee. About this time he lost his mother, whose memory he cherished with reverence and affection to the last. His duty took him to the court-house of the tehsildar, Mr Naiken, who soon remarked his extraordinary intelligence and industry. There was an English school at Tiruvarar, where Mutuswamy managed to pick up an elementary knowledge of the English language. Mr Naiken then sent him to Sir Henry Montgomery’s school at Madras, as a companion to his nephew, and there he won prizes and scholarships year after year. In 1854 he won a prize of 500 rupees offered to the students of the Madras presidency by the council of education for the best English essay. This success brought him to the notice of Sir Alexander Arbuthnot and Mr Justice Holloway. He was offered help to proceed to England and compete for the civil service, but being a Brahman and married, he declined to cross the ocean. Instead he entered the subordinate government service, and was employed in such various posts as school-teacher, record-keeper in Tanjore, and in 1856 deputy-inspector of schools. At this time the Madras authorities instituted the examination for the office of pleaders, and Mutuswamy came out first in the first examination, even beating Sir T. Madhavarao, his senior by many years. Mutuswamy was then appointed in succession district munsiff at Tranquebar, deputy-collector in Tanjore in 1859, sub-judge of south Kanara in 1865, and a magistrate of police at Madras in 1868. While serving in the last post he passed the examination for the degree of bachelor of laws of the local university., He was next employed as a judge of the Madras small causes court, until in 1878 he was raised to the bench of the high court, which office he occupied with ability and distinction for over fifteen years, sometimes acting as the chief justice. He attended by invitation of the viceroy the imperial assemblage at Delhi in 1877. In 1878 he received the honour of C.I.E. and in 1893 the K.C.I.E. was conferred on him. But he did not live long to enjoy this dignity, dying suddenly in 1895. Mutuswamy was too devoted to his official work to give much time to other pursuits. Still he took his full share in the affairs of the Madras university, of which he was nominated a fellow in 1872 and a syndic in 1877, and was well acquainted with English law, literature and philosophy. He was through life a staunch Brahman, devout and amiable in character, with a taste for the ancient music of India and the study of the Vedas and other departments of Sanskrit literature.
AJACCIO, the capital of Corsica, on the west coast of the island, 210 m. S.E. of Marseilles. Pop. (1906) 19,021. Ajaccio occupies a sheltered position at the foot of wooded hills on the northern shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio. The harbour, lying to the east of the town, is protected on the south by a peninsula which carries the citadel and terminates in the Citadel jetty; to the south-west of this peninsula lies the Place Bonaparte, a quarter frequented chiefly by winter visitors attracted by the mild climate of the town. Apart from one or two fine thoroughfares converging to the Place Bonaparte, the streets are mean and narrow and the town has a deserted appearance. The house in which Napoleon I, was born in 1769 is preserved, and his associations with the town are everywhere emphasized by street-names and statues. The other buildings, including the cathedral of the 16th century, are of little interest. The town is the seat of a bishopric dating at least from the 7th century and of a prefect. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, training colleges, a communal college, a museum and a library; the three latter are established in the Palais Fesch, founded by Cardinal Fesch, who was born at Ajaccio in 1763. Ajaccio has small manufactures of cigars and macaroni and similar products, and carries on shipbuilding, sardine-fishing and coral-fishing.
Its exports include timber, citrons, skins, chestnuts and gallic acid. The port is accessible by the largest ships, but its accommodation is indifferent. In 1904 there entered 603 vessels with a tonnage of 202,980, and cleared 608 vessels with a tonnage of 202,502. The present town of Ajaccio lies about two miles to the south of its original site, from which it was transferred by the Genoese in 1492. Occupied from 1553 to 1559 by the French, it again fell to the Genoese after the treaty of Cateau Cambresis in the latter year. The town finally passed to the French in 1768. Since 1810 it has been capital of the department of Corsica.
AJAIGARH, or Adjygurh, a native state of India, in Bundelkhand, under the Central India agency. It has an area of 771 sq. m., and a population in 1901 of 78,236. The chief, who is a Bundela Rajput, bears the title of sawai maharaja. He has an estimated revenue of about £15,000, and pays a tribute of £460. He resides at the town of Naushahr, at the foot of the hill-fortress of Ajaigarh, from which the state takes its name. This fort is situated on a very steep hill, more than 800 ft. above the town of the same name; and contains the ruins of temples adorned with elaborately carved sculptures. It was captured by the British in 1809. The town is subject to malaria. The state suffered severely from famine in 1868–1869, and again in 1896–1897.
AJANTA (more properly Ājūnthā), a village in the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad in India (N. lat. 20° 32′ by E. long. 75° 48′), celebrated for its cave hermitages and halls. The caves are in a wooded and rugged ravine about 312 m. from the village. Along the bottom of the ravine runs the river Wagura, a mountain stream, which forces its way into the valley over a bluff on the east, and forms in its descent a beautiful waterfall, or rather series of waterfalls, 200 ft. high, the sound of which must have been constantly audible to the dwellers in the caves. These are about thirty in number, excavated in the south side of the precipitous bank of the ravine, and vary from 35 to 110 ft. in elevation above the bed of the torrent. The caves are of two kinds—dwelling-halls and meeting-halls. The former, as one enters from the pathway along the sides of the cliff, have a broad verandah, its roof supported by pillars, and giving towards the interior on to a hall averaging in size about 35 ft. by 20 ft. To left and right, and at the back, dormitories are excavated opening on to this hall, and in the centre of the back, facing the entrance, an image of the Buddha usually stands in a niche. The number of dormitories varies according to the size of the hall, and in the larger ones pillars support the roof on all three sides, forming a sort of cloister running round the hall. The meeting-halls go back into the rock about twice as far as the dwelling-halls; the largest of them being 9412 ft. from the verandah to the back, and 4114 ft. across, including the cloister. They were used as chapter-houses for the meetings of the Buddhist Order. The caves are in three groups, the oldest group being of various dates from 200 B.C. to A.D. 200, the second group belonging, approximately, to the 6th, and the third group to the 7th century A.D. Most of the interior walls of the caves were covered with fresco paintings, of a considerable degree of merit, and somewhat in the style of the early Italian painters. When first discovered, in 1817, these frescoes were in a fair state of preservation, but they have since been allowed to go hopelessly to ruin. Fortunately, the school of art in Bombay, especially under the supervision of J. Griffiths, had copied in colours a number of them before the last vestiges had disappeared, and other copies of certain of the paintings have also been made. These copies are invaluable as being the only evidence we now have of pictorial art in India before the rise of Hinduism. The expression “Cave Temples” used by Anglo-Indians of such halls is inaccurate. Ajanta was a kind of college monastery. Hsüan Tsang informs us that Dinnāga, the celebrated Buddhist
