The Ajanta Caves are approximately thirty rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the second century BCE to about 480 CE in the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar District of Maharashtra state in India. The caves include paintings and rock-cut sculptures described as among the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian art, particularly expressive paintings that present emotions through gesture, pose and form.
The early history of gardening is largely entangled with the history of agriculture, with gardens that were mainly ornamental generally the preserve of the elite until quite recent times. Smaller gardens generally had being a kitchen garden as their first priority, as is still often the case.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, (CSMVS) originally named Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, is a museum in Mumbai (Bombay) which documents the history of India from prehistoric to modern times.
The Japanese dry garden or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water. Zen gardens are commonly found at temples or monasteries. A zen garden is usually relatively small, surrounded by a wall or buildings, and is usually meant to be seen while seated from a single viewpoint outside the garden, such as the porch of the hojo, the residence of the chief monk of the temple or monastery. Many, with gravel rather than grass, are only stepped into for maintenance. Classical zen gardens were created at temples of Zen Buddhism in Kyoto during the Muromachi period. They were intended to imitate the essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve as an aid for meditation.
The Seokguram Grotto is a hermitage and part of the Bulguksa temple complex. It lies four kilometers east of the temple on Mt. Tohamsan, in Gyeongju, South Korea. It is classified as National Treasure No. 24 by the South Korean government and is located at 994, Jinhyeon-dong, Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsanbuk-do. The grotto overlooks the Sea of Japan and rests 750 meters above sea level. In 1962, it was designated the 24th national treasure of Korea. In 1995, Seokguram was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List together with the Bulguksa Temple. It exemplifies some of the best Buddhist sculptures in the world.
The Longmen Grottoes or Longmen Caves are some of the finest examples of Chinese Buddhist art. Housing tens of thousands of statues of Shakyamuni Buddha and his disciples, they are located 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) south of present-day Luoyang in Henan province, China. The images, many once painted, were carved as outside rock reliefs and inside artificial caves excavated from the limestone cliffs of the Xiangshan (香山) and Longmenshan, running east and west. The Yi River flows northward between them and the area used to be called Yique. The alternative name of "Dragon's Gate Grottoes" derives from the resemblance of the two hills that check the flow of the Yi River to the typical "Chinese gate towers" that once marked the entrance to Luoyang from the south. There are as many as 100,000 statues within the 2,345 caves, ranging from 1 inch (25 mm) to 57 feet (17 m) in height. The area also contains nearly 2,500 stelae and inscriptions, hence the name “Forest of Ancient Stelae", as well as over sixty Buddhist pagodas. Situated in a scenic natural environment, the caves were dug from a 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) stretch of cliff running along both banks of the river. 30% date from the Northern Wei and 60% from the Tang dynasty, caves from other periods accounting for less than 10% of the total. Starting with the Northern Wei Dynasty in 493 AD, patrons and donors included emperors, Wu Zetian, members of the royal family, other rich families, generals, and religious groups.
Japanese gardens are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden designers to suggest a natural landscape, and to express the fragility of existence as well as time's unstoppable advance. Ancient Japanese art inspired past garden designers. Water is an important feature of many gardens, as are rocks and often gravel. Despite there being many attractive Japanese flowering plants, herbaceous flowers generally play much less of a role in Japanese gardens than in the West, though seasonally flowering shrubs and trees are important, all the more dramatic because of the contrast with the usual predominant green. Evergreen plants are "the bones of the garden" in Japan. Though a natural-seeming appearance is the aim, Japanese gardeners often shape their plants, including trees, with great rigour.
The Kanheri Caves are a group of caves and rock-cut monuments cut into a massive basalt outcrop in the forests of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, on the former island of Salsette in the western outskirts of Mumbai, India. They contain Buddhist sculptures and relief carvings, paintings and inscriptions, dating from the 1st century CE to the 10th century CE. Kanheri comes from the Sanskrit Krishnagiri, which means black mountain.
Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and at times eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms.
The Roji-en: Garden of the Drops of Dew, The George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Japanese Gardens consists of six gardens representing different periods in the development of the Japanese garden. It occupies 16 acres of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Morikami Park in suburban Delray Beach, Florida, USA. The gardens are open to the public, but closed Mondays and major holidays. Access to the gardens is included in the admission fee to the museum.
The Chinese Garden of Friendship is a heritage-listed 1.03-hectare (3-acre) Chinese garden at 1 Harbour Street, in the Sydney Central Business District, City of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Modelled after the classic private gardens of the Ming dynasty, the garden offers an insight into Chinese heritage and culture. It was designed by Guangzhou Garden Planning & Building Design Institute, Tsang & Lee, and Edmond Bull & Corkery and built from 1986 to 1988 by Gutteridge Haskins & Davey; the Darling Harbour Authority; Imperial Gardens; Leightons; and Australian Native Landscapes. The gardens were added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 October 2018.
Chinese Garden is a park in Jurong East, Singapore. Built in 1975 by the JTC Corporation and designed by Prof. Yuen-chen Yu, an architect from Taiwan, the Chinese Garden's concept is based on Chinese gardening art. The main characteristic is the integration of architectural features with the natural environment. The Chinese Garden is modeled along the northern Chinese imperial style of architecture and landscaping. It is located next to Chinese Garden MRT station and connected to the adjacent Japanese Garden by a bridge. Along with Japanese Garden, the two gardens are collectively known as the Jurong Gardens.
The International Buddhist Temple is located in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. It is a Chinese Buddhist temple run by the International Buddhist Society.
Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, is a premier museum of North India having collections of Gandharan sculptures, sculptures from ancient and medieval India, Pahari and Rajasthani miniature paintings. It owes its existence to the partition of India in August, 1947. Prior to the partition, much of the collections of art objects, paintings and sculptures present here were housed in the Central Museum, Lahore, the then capital of Punjab. The museum has one of the largest collection of Gandharan artefacts in the world.
Tiger Rock is a flume ride at the theme park Chessington World of Adventures in Chessington, southwest London, England. Primarily designed by John Wardley and opened in 1987, it is located in the Land of the Tiger area of the park. The ride was originally extensively themed, although the majority of its scenic design was later removed due to lack of maintenance and durability over time. A contest was held in 2014 that focused on possible new themes for the ride. In September 2017, the ride closed for refurbishment and reemerged on 5 May 2018 as Tiger Rock.
The Rock Garden of Chandigarh is a sculpture garden for rock enthusiasts in Chandigarh, India. It is also known as Nek Chand Saini's Rock Garden of Nathupur after its founder Nek Chand Saini, a government official who started building the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. It has spread over an area of 40 acres (16 ha), and is completely built from industrial, home waste, and discarded items.
The Krishnapuram Palace is a palace and museum located in Kayamkulam near Alappuzha in Alappuzha district, Kerala in southwestern India. It was built in the 18th century by Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma, the Travancore kingdom. It is built in the architectural style of Kerala with gabled roof, narrow corridor and dormer windows, near the Krishnaswamy Temple at Krishnapuram.
Ridi Viharaya or Silver Temple is a 2nd-century BCE Theravada Buddhist temple in the village of Ridigama, Sri Lanka. Built during the reign of Dutthagamani of Anuradhapura, the temple is considered as the place where the silver ore, which provided silver to complete Ruwanwelisaya; one of the largest stupa in Sri Lanka, was discovered. According to the chronicles Mahavamsa and Thupavamsa, the Ridi Viharaya complex was built in gratitude for helping him cherish his dream of completing Ruwanwelisaya.
A rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are a category of rock art, and sometimes found as part of, or in conjunction with, rock-cut architecture. However, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric peoples. A few such works exploit the natural contours of the rock and use them to define an image, but they do not amount to man-made reliefs. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures throughout human history, and were especially important in the art of the ancient Near East. Rock reliefs are generally fairly large, as they need to be in order to have an impact in the open air. Most of those discussed here have figures that are over life-size, and in many the figures are multiples of life-size.
Seiunji is a temple in Yamato-cho, Kisai, Koshu City, Yamanashi Prefecture. It is a Kenchoji sect temple of the Rinzai school, with the mountain name of Tenmokuzan and the Honzon of Shakyamuni Buddha. At the time of its founding, the temple was called Gokoku Zenji.
