The cave paintings of Ajanta are the oldest surviving examples of painting in India. They depict stories from the lives of the Buddha (the jatakas) and date from the 1st century BC to about AD 480. The cave complex was discovered in 1819 and since then attempts have been made to document the paintings inside them. In 1844 Major Robert Gill was commissioned to make copies. Unfortunately most of the paintings he completed were destroyed in a fire in 1866. To make up for this loss, from 1872, John Griffiths from the Bombay school of Art and seven Indian students spent every winter for the following 13 years at the caves producing approximately 300 paintings, of which this is an example.

This painting can be found on the verandah of cave seventeen. It depicts scenes from the Dhanapala jataka in which a devious monk Devadatta wants to usurp power from the Buddha and take over the monastic order. With the aid of King Ajatasatru he plans to assassinate the Buddha by releasing a wild elephant called Dhanapala into the path of the Buddha. As soon as the elephant is let loose in the courtyard of Devadetta’s palace it rampages into the main street and grabs a horse and rider in it’s trunk as if to crush them. The ladies looking out of their balconies look on the scene in horror. The rampaging elephant is eventually made calm by the Buddha and bows down in front of him. Through the power of his benevolence the elephant has been tamed.

The white patches on the painting are placed over fragile areas that require conservation work.