Scholars and art-critics up to until quite recently were inclined to hold the opinion that the Ajanta paintings and the majority of the Buddhist sculpture in the Deccan had a direct influence of the art of North India, particularly during the Gupta period, and that is the reason why many authors have assigned the frescoes of Ajanta to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. The Archaeological Department of Hyderabad in its researches has however found that the art of painting at Ajanta was fairly developed in the second century B. C., and it must have taken several centuries to reach that standard. According to our view the people of the Deccan, independent of any influence from the North, were conversant with the art of painting in the early centuries of the first millenium B. C. Now to prove the soundness of this view I show you an inscription from Cave X which is painted above the figure of a Raja who with his family is proceeding to a Bodhi-tree, the emblem of the Great Being, in order to show his devotion.