Through The Ages Of A City ....

 The Trip was primarily to see Ajanta and Ellora caves, a long time agenda. The base had to be Aurangabad - a town that seems to exist solely to serve that singular purpose ! For,  right from the shiny Airport ( "Domestic and Seasonally International"), The Ajanta-Ellora  theme could be seen splashed around almost everywhere as murals, posters, name-boards . 

 But after Ajanta-Ellora-ing to heart's content , at the fag end of the trip, while seeing around Aurangabad , it was made apparent  that other than being a proud host to visitors from all over the world coming to gawk at the two World Heritage Sites , The City  has its own colourful life story to tell .  Remnants of which are strewn around in the shade of the hill ranges.

Though officially renamed " Chatrapati-Sambajinagar ", Aurangabad happily continues to be Aurangabad on people's tongues as well as on  signboards ! The  name always brings memories of  beautiful fabrics. Cotton fields along highways. The Paithani weaves and motifs. Quite surprised to learn that the basic silk for these prized weaves are now procured from South Karnataka ! And that the major industry now is not textiles but automobiles ! Many brand names have units here .  

Paithan, subsumed by present day Aurangabad,  has been a land of enterprise, right from the early centuries of the Common Era , when  it served as Capital of the Satavahanas, who are known to have controlled trade routes going beyond seas both  Eastward and Westward. A Museum in town , Chatrapati Shivaji Sangrahalaya,  has an impressive collection of Coins and artefacts from the Satavahana period.  All those exhibit are small , even heads and  figures made of kaolin . Wonder what such  finger sized figures were used for  at that time. (Also  displayed  is "a Holy Quran written by Aurangazeb" ) . A poster showed an ivory figure , similar to the famous Pompeii Lakshmi, but it was not seen among exhibits either here or in the other two Museums situated in the Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University Campus- 1.The Regional Museum in Soneri Mahal and 2. The History Museum , part of the History department . Wonderful, vast  University Campus , by the way , like our  Mysore Manasagangothri . All three Museums had collections donated by  individuals , perhaps researchers. But the info boards were very badly written. Texts need serious proof reading. 

Devagiri, the medieval 7-walled fortress of the mighty Yadavas ( aka Sevunas) , is aso a suburb of the City now. The fort has some ingenious architectural devices to repel enemies. Impressive is the moat with the  sheer  rock cliff ( apparently manually cut) of the hill forming the wall , impossible to climb. The dark labyrinth , a maze of passages, can drive any invader crazy. But , as the Guide remarked, no Fort can be completely impregnable. If it will not fall to battery assault, it will fall to strategy : in this case Devagiri buckled when its food supply was cut off .

Devagiri was grandly renamed Daulatabad by Mhd. Bin Tughlaq , but  thanks to his misadventure of shifting his Capital lock-stock-barrel from Delhi to here  in 1327 and , within 4 years , back to Delhi,  his name became a synonym for "hare-brained-ideas". They continue to be in common usage , both the name he gave the place and the epithet he earned for himself .

The Capital Shifting rigamarole had involved shifting  entire clans of artisans , technicians and labourers too , in fact everything except the buildings. But when  the reverse shift happened , quite a few opted to stay back . Among them , families that made paper by hand , called Kagzis . They were experts in making fine paper , using cloth, plant fibers , cotton waste,old paper etc and their paper was much sought after for the vast number of documents and books created in the courts of the Sultans and  Mughals. The place where these Kagzis put down roots is now the hamlet of Kagzipura , on the way to Ellora from Daulatabad. There have been efforts in recent times to revive the dying art of handmade paper .

Daulatabad Fort  ranks high in the lists  of  "Things To Do In this Town" as it is in one of the suburbs of the present city. Aurangabad itself began life as the village Khadki , which was made a Capital city in 1610 by Malik Ambar , the Abyssinian PM of the Ahmednagar Sultanate .  The life story of Malik Ambar, from his impoverished  African homeland to slavery to Peshwa-hood, is stuff heroic mythologies are made of ! His Tomb is in Khuldabad , not far from Aurangabad , but  presently it is closed for lack of maintenance. 

 Khuldabad is dubbed " Valley of Saints" for the numerous tombs of Sufi Saints of  the Chisti Order dotting it.  Aurangazeb lies here too ,  in a very simple grave .  Whereas , the tomb of his principal wife, who predeceased him,  is a grand affair , a mini Taj Mahal , eliciting a million camera clicks - Bibi ka Maqbara. Situated in Begumpura locality of Aurangabad. 

 After building a mega Empire , causing innumerable wars , deaths and destructions, Aurangzeb seems to have realised, in his eighties,  the utter futility of power and pomp and retired to the sanctuary of his spiritual guru to seek solace for his troubled mind. On his deathbed, he reportedly advised his three sons  to share his Estate equally. After his death, his sons promptly went for each other's throats . After a bloodbath, the survivor ascended the Throne , only to go down in history as the one who brought the  once mighty dynasty to an inglorious end. Nobody learns anything .  

With the British poking their nose in , there came up a Cantonment on the fringe of  Aurangabad in 1816 , which still continues to be an Army Enclave . Markedly different looking from the rest of the town , with gardens , cenotaphs and colonial buildings. If the Guide is to be believed, even people who live there now are "different" . Why ?  "They marry inter-religiously and children all go to English medium schools" . Hmmm. (shrug and bear it !)

In the same region is one of the temples flattened by invaders and later rebuilt by the pious Queen Ahalyabai Holkar : the jyotirlinga shrine of Grishneshwar. A lively pilgrimage center now where bags, mobilephones and men's shirts are banned. The shops lining the path to the shrine brazenly sell manufactured Rudrakshas with images of nagas and shivalingams on them , as "Genuine From Nepal" . And Pilgrims buy ! - am very sure they are all not so gullible as to swallow that claim ;  buying a temple souvenir is just a habit, does not matter if it came  from a Nepalese tree or a Surat factory.  

A twenty minute drive from Bibi ka Maqbara,  on a flank of a hill , like the end line of the City, are 12 rock cut caves strewn intermittently along the rock faces. Aurangabad Caves , which predate Ellora and are contemporaries of the earliest ones in Ajanta. The oldest of these date from 6th CE . Most are Buddhist in content , one has Hindu Deities Ganesha and Saptamatrikas alongside Buddha , none are fully finished , one shows only preliminary cutting. It is apparent that work was abandoned because of the unsuitable quality of the rock . Though basically the same basaltic formations as the Deccan Trap that is also seen at Ajanta , the stone here  is marred by veins of minerals and , at places , geodes. The few carvings that are complete are fine and comparable to those at Ajanta . One exclusive panel of special interest is that of the Ashtamahabhaya - Avalokiteswara , in Cave 7 , the deity who protects against the 8 perils of wayfarers ( like danger from wild animals , drowning , thieves etc ). These caves are not as well promoted as Ellora -Ajanta and hence free of Tourist crowds. Great view of the countryside from here . 

While crisscrossing  around town , could see numerous  old stone gateways , though hardly any fort walls . Finally , even a traffic island with the words "City Of Gates" erected on it , to be illuminated after dusk. There were 52 Gates in all when the City was Fortified, it seems , but only 13 have survived . The biggest is Bhadkal Gate, erected by Malik Ambar to commemorate his victory over invading Mughals. The Gate built by Aurangazeb is called, appropriately, Delhi Gate.  Close to this gate is a large lake/tank .Aurangazeb had drained the marshland along the northern wall of the city and  created gardens and lakes. The larger  lake , KizhriTalao , which attracts migratory birds, is now called Salim Ali Lake in honour of the  famous ornithologist .

Since the gates are within the modern City, road traffic  passes through them , as it would have in historic times . In a sense , both past and present co-exist comfortably . 

This is also seen in the water management systems . When Malik Ambar founded his Capital , he had also made elaborate arrangements to channelise  spring and stream water from the hills through aqueducts of stone conduits and clay pipes. Though modernised now, the idea is still in use . One such aqueduct made 400 years is retained in good condition and is famous as Panchakki or Water Mill. Water comes from 8kms away , using only gravity to flow .The falling water rotates a wheel that in turn sets a stone mill in motion  to grind grain. Standing within the compound that houses this Mill are a 400 year old Banyan tree and an underground hall kept cool by a water reservoir on its roof . A mosque within the same campus has remarkably smooth and shiny white pillars ; the marble like look reportedly achieved by a special plaster made with  ground sea shells. 

All the above fall within the bounds of what is called Old City , the area which was part of  Hyderabad State , The Nizam's Dominion , which joined the Indian Union only in 1948 . It was passed on to Maharashtra ( ex Bombay State) during linguistic reorganisation of States. With rapid industrialisation , a New City was added which , as can be seen on the way to the Airport, is markedly different from Old City i.e. , it looks like any modern city in any State with no special character to differentiate it as Aurangabad . It is actually like a nicely arranged display in a Museum which goes back in time progressively , from Present Time to Near History to Medieval to Early Common Era .