This is volume one of a projected series on the Ajanta Caves of Maharashtra and the associated 5th century AD civilisation and art works by a celebrated scholar whose sometimes controversial life work has been Ajanta and its heritage. Part One of this volume contains chapters on  the "Golden Age" of Buddhist Ajanta, on the patronage which fostered the famed art works, on the artist-monks and their way of life, and on the traumatic collapse of the Vakataka Empire in 477 AD following the death of the emperor Harisena. Part Two looks at the 19 caves and the surviving Buddhist murals, some of which were abandoned incomplete on the fall of their patrons. A translated saga of the fall of the empire and translated cave inscriptions are appended.