UPSC Prelims 2017 Question:

The painting of Bodhisattva Padmapani is one of the most famous and oft-illustrated paintings at

Explanation:

• The Ajanta Caves have been described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as “the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting,” and consist of about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from approximately the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE.
  
  
• The mural painting of Bodhisattva Padmapani survives from early medieval India and is preserved in the interior of the rock-cut Buddhist monastery of Ajanta. It provides the earliest visual evidence of elaborate crowns being worn as signifiers of both princely and divine status.
  
  
• The Bodhisattva Padmapani sits among a crowd of devotees, both princesses and commoners. He holds a padma (lotus) and has three bends in the body creating a movement in the picture space. It provides the earliest visual evidence of elaborate crowns being worn as signifiers of both princely and divine status. The crowns depicted are the antecedents of those used in Buddhist ritual today by the Vajracharya priests in Nepal.
  
  

Therefore, option (1) is the correct answer.

Subject: History | Indian Paintings