Ajantha is a village in

Aurangabad district, Maharashtra Aurangabad district (Marathi pronunciation: �u̯ɾəŋɡaːbaːd̪ Urdu pronunciation: �ːɾəŋɡaːbaːd̪ is one of the 36 districts of the state of Maharashtra in western India. It borders the districts of Nashik to the west, Jalgaon ...

, on the road between

Jalgaon Jalgaon () is a city in Maharashtra, India. The city is located in North Maharashtra, and serves as the administrative headquarters of its namesake district, the Jalgaon district. Jalgaon is colloquially known as the “''Banana City of India ...

and

Aurangabad Aurangabad ( is a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarters of Aurangabad district and is the largest city in the Marathwada region. Located on a hilly upland terrain in the Deccan Traps, Aurangabad is th ...

near the

Ajanta Caves The Ajanta Caves are approximately thirty rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the second century BCE to about 480 CE in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in India. The caves include paintings and rock-cut sculptures des ...

Geography

It has an average elevation of . Ajanta Came to visibility during one war which was unknown to most of the folks out there. Ajanta Village was under the rule of Nizamshahi (Nizam of Ahmednagar) adil shahi untill 1634. in 1634 Mughals captured Daulatabad and Khadki- Present day Aurangabad City.

History

The

were discovered in 1819 by John Smith during his hunting party in the region, but the village is much more ancient. It has been ruled by many rulers including

Nizam Shahi The Ahmadnagar Sultanate was a late medieval Indian Muslim kingdom located in the northwestern Deccan, between the sultanates of Gujarat and Bijapur. Malik Ahmed, the Bahmani governor of Junnar after defeating the Bahmani army led by general J ...

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

Rajput Rajput (from Sanskrit ''raja-putra'' 'son of a king') is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating from the Indian subcontinent. The term Ra ...

and

Maratha The Marathi people (Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a M ...

. It is believed that the village came into existence at the end of 3rd century under the Vakataka Empire

Vakataka dynasty The Vakataka dynasty () was an ancient Indian dynasty that originated from the Deccan in the mid-3rd century CE. Their state is believed to have extended from the southern edges of Malwa and Gujarat in the north to the Tungabhadra River in the ...

and was a Brahmin dynasty. Ajanta became a prominent village for the

after the victory of

Shah Jahan Shihab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram (5 January 1592 – 22 January 1666), better known by his regnal name Shah Jahan I (; ), was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire, reigning from January 1628 until July 1658. Under his emperorship, the Mugha ...

in the Siege of

Daulatabad Fort Daulatabad Fort, also known as Devagiri Fort or Deogiri Fort, is a historic fortified citadel located in Daulatabad village near Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India. It was the capital of the Yadava dynasty (9th century–14th century CE), for a br ...

in 1632. After the successful campaign, Shah Jahan granted Ajanta village, Vetalwadi and Janjala fort to the

Sardar Nathu Singh son of Maharawal BHIM SINGH of

Jaisalmer Jaisalmer , nicknamed "The Golden city", is a city in the Indian state of Rajasthan, located west of the state capital Jaipur. The town stands on a ridge of yellowish sandstone and is crowned by the ancient Jaisalmer Fort. This fort contains a ...

for his bravery in the war.

References

Villages in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra {{Maharashtra-geo-stub