CHOULTRIE ATTACHED TO CHAITYA No. 19.—AJUNTA.
ON the right-hand side, as you enter, is a small porch, extending at right angles to the main façade. This is not a Vihara, or residence, but a Choultrie, or place of refuge or repose for pilgrims or attendants.
The front consists of two pillars of very graceful design, and the whole composition is pleasing and appropriate to its purposes.
It may be of the same age as the Chaitya to which it belongs, and form a part of its original arrangements, but there is a certain character about the sculpture of its capitals which would lead us to suspect that it was added afterwards at some more modern date.
If this is not so, it may be considered as one of the very earliest examples of a mode of changing a circular form into a square one, by a leaf falling over at the angles. It is somewhat clumsily used here, but afterwards became universal in Indian architecture.
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