William Dalrymple

India’s ancient cave monasteries 0
- William Dalrymple
- December 27, 2016
To the north of Pune lie rock-cut complexes as startling as Petra but completely overlooked by tourists The valley was wide and fertile, still green despite the onset of the Indian summer heat. On the horizon, the hilltops were jagged with the silhouetted crenellations of Maratha forts. Below, in the valley bottom, white oxen with
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The Greatest Ancient Picture Gallery 0
- William Dalrymple
- December 27, 2016
Massimo Borchi/Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis In the winter of 1844, Major Robert Gill, a young British military draftsman, set off from Madras into the independent princely state of Hyderabad to record a major new archaeological discovery. Some years earlier, in 1819, a British hunting party in the jungles of the Western Ghats had followed a tiger into
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The Ajanta cave murals: ‘nothing less than the birth of Indian art’1
- William Dalrymple
- December 27, 2016
In the early summer of 1819, a British hunting party was heading through thick jungle near Aurangabad, in Maharashtra, western India, when the tiger they were tracking disappeared into a deep ravine. Leading the hunters was Captain John Smith, a young cavalry officer from Madras. Beckoning his friends to follow, he tracked the animal down a semi-circular scarp
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