products, and carries on shipbuilding, sardine-fishing and
coral-fishing. Its exports include timber, citrons, skins,
chestnuts and gallic acid. The port is accessible by the largest
ships, but its accommodation is indifferent. In 1904 there
entered 603 vessels with a tonnage of 202,980, and cleared
608 vessels with a tonnage of 202,502. The present town of
Ajaccio lies about two miles to the south of its original
site, from which it was transferred by the Genoese in 1492.
Occupied from 1553 to 1559 by the French, it again fell to the
Genoese after the treaty of Cateau Cambresis in the latter
year. The town finally passed to the French in 1768. Since
1810 it has been capital of the . department of Corsica.
AJAIGARH, or ADJYGURH, a native state of India, in
Bundelkhand, under the Central India agency. It has an
area of 771 sq. m., and a population in 1901 of 78,236.
The chief. who is a Bundela Rajput, bears the title of sawai
maharaja. He has an estimated revenue of about L. 15,000, and
pays a tribute of L. 460. He resides at the town of Naushahr,
at the foot of the hill-fortress of Ajaigarh, from which the
state takes its name. This fort is situated on a very steep
hill, more than 800 ft. above the town of the same name;
and contains the ruins of temples adorned with elaborately
carved sculptures. It was captured by the British in
1809. The town is subject to malaria. The state suffered
severely from famine in 1868-1869, and again in 1896-1897.
AJANTA (more properly AJUJNTHI), a village in the
dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad in India (N. lat. 20 deg. 32'
by E. long. 75 deg. 48'), celebrated for its cave hermitages and
halls. The caves are in a wooded and rugged ravine about 3 1/2
m. from the village. Along the bottom of the ravine runs the
river Wagura, a mountain stream, which forces its way into
the valley over a bluff on the east, and forms in its descent
a beautiful waterfall, or rather series of waterfalls, 200 ft.
high, the sound of which must have been constantly audible to
the dwellers in the caves. These are about thirty in number,
excavated in the south side of the precipitous bank of the ravine,
and vary from 35 to 110 ft. in elevation above the bed of the
torrent. The caves are of two kinds---dwelling-halls and
meeting-halls. The former, as one enters from the pathway
along the sides of the cliff, have a broad verandah, its roof
supported by pillars, and giving towards the interior on to
a hall averaging in size about 35 ft. by 20 ft. To left and
right, and at the back, dormitories are excavated opening
on to this hall, and in the centre of the back, facing the
entrance, an image of the Buddha usually stands in a niche.
The number of dormitories varies according to the size of the
hall, and in the larger ones pillars support the roof on all
three sides, forming a sort of cloister running round the
hall. The meeting-halls go back into the rock about twice as far
as the dwelling-halls; the largest of them being 94 1/2 ft. from
the verandah to the back, and 41 1/4 ft. across, including the .
cloister. They were used as chapter-houses for the meetings
of the Buddhist Order. The caves are in three groups, the
oldest group being of various dates from 200 B.C. to A.D.
200, the second group belonging, approximately, to the
6th, and the third group to the 7th century A.D. Most of
the interior walls of the caves were covered with fresco
paintings, of a considerable degree of merit, and somewhat
in the style of the early Italian painters. When first
discovered, in 1817, these frescoes were in a fair state of
preservation, but they have since been allowed to go hopelessly to
ruin. Fortunately, the school of art in Bombay, especially
under the supervision of J. Griffiths, had copied in colours
a number of them before the last vestiges had disappeared,
and other copies of certain of the paintings have also been
made. These copies are invaluable as being the only evidence
we now have of pictorial art in India before the rise of
Hinduism. The expression ``Cave Temples'' used by Anglo-Indians
of such halls is inaccurate. Ajanta was a kind of college
monastery. Hsuan Tsang informs us that Dinnaga, the
celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author
of well-known books on logic, resided there. In its prime
the settlement must have afforded accommodation for several
hundreds, teachers and pupils combined. Very few of the
frescoes have been identified, but two are illustrations
of stones in Arya Sura's Jataka Mala, as appears
from verses in Buddhist Sanskrit painted beneath them.
See J. Burgess and Bhagwanlal lndraji, Inscriptions from
the Cave Temples of Western India (Bombay, 1881); J.
Fergusson and L. Burgess, Cave Temples of India (London,
1880); J. Griffiths, Paintings in the Buddhist Cave Temples
of Ajanta (London, 2 vols., 1896--1897). (T. W. R. D.)
AJAX (Gr. Aias), a Greek hero, son of Oileus, king of
Locris, called the ``lesser'' or Locrian Ajax, to distinguish
him from Ajax, son of Telamon. In spite of his small stature,
he held his own amongst the other heroes before Troy; he was
brave, next to Achilles in swiftness of foot and famous
for throwing the spear. But he was boastful, arrogant and
quarrelsome; like the Telamonian Ajax, he was the enemy of
Odysseus, and in the end the victim of the vengeance of Athene,
who wrecked his ship on his homeward voyage (Odyssey, iv.
499). A later story gives a more definite account of the offence
of which he was guilty. It is said that, after the fall of
Troy, he dragged Cassandra away by force from the statue of
the goddess at which she had taken refuge as a suppliant, and
even violated her (Lycophron, 360, Quintus Smyrnaeus xiii.
422). For this, his ship was wrecked in a storm on the coast
of Euboea, and he himself was struck by lightning (Virgil,
Aen. i. 40). He was said to have lived after his death in the
island of Leuke. He was worshipped as a national hero by the
Opuntian Locrians (on whose coins he appears), who always left
a vacant place for him in the ranks of their army when drawn
up in battle array. He was the subject of a lost tragedy by
Sophocles. The rape of Cassandra by Ajax was frequently
represented in Greek works of art, for instance on the chest
of Cypselus described by Pausanias (v. 17) and in extant works.
AJAX, son Of Telamon, king of Cyprus, a legendary hero of
ancient Greece. To distinguish him from Ajax, son of Oileus,
he was called the ``great'' or Telamonian Ajax. In Homer's
Iliad he is described as of great stature and colossal
frame, second only to Achilles in strength and bravery, and
the ``bulwark of the Achaeans.', He engaged Hector in single
combat and, with the aid of Athene, rescued the body of Achilles
from the hands of the Trojans. In the competition between
him and Odysseus for the armour of Achilles, Agamemnon, at
the instigation of Athene, awarded the prize to Odysseus.
This so enraged AJax that it caused his death (Odyssey, xi.
541). According to a later and more definite story, his
disappointment drove him mad; he rushed out of his tent and
fell upon the flocks of sheep in the camp under the impression
that they were the enemy on coming to his senses, he slew
himself with the sword which he had received as a present from
Hector. This is the account of his death given in the Ajax
of Sophocles (Pindar, Nemea, 7; Ovid, Met. xiii. 1). From
his blood sprang a red flower, as at the death of Hyacinthus,
which bore on its leaves the initial letters of his name
AI, also expressive of lament (Pausanias i. 35. 4). His ashes
were deposited in a golden urn on the Rhoetean promontory
at the entrance of the Hellespont. Like Achilles; he is
represented as living after his death in the island of Leuke
at the mouth of the Danube (Pausanias iii. 19. 11). Ajax,
who in the post-Homeric legend is described as the grandson of
Aeacus and the great-grandson of Zeus, was the tutelary hero
of the island of.Salamis, where he had a temple and an image,
and where a festival called Aianteia was celebrated in his
honour (Pausanias i. 35). At this festival a couch was set up,
On which the panoply of the hero was placed, a practice which
recalls the Roman lectisternium. The identification of Ajax
with the family of Aeacus was chiefly a matter which concerned
the Athenians, after Salamis had come into their possession,
on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted a line in
the Iliad (ii. 557 or 558), for the purpose of supporting
the Athenian claim to the island. Ajax then became an Attic
hero; he was worshipped at Athens, where he had a statue in the
market-place, and the tribe Aiantis was called after his name.
Many illustrious Athenians---Cimon, Miltiades, Alcibiades,
the historian Thucydides---traced their descent from Ajax.
See D. Bassi, La Leggenda di Aiace Telamonio (1890); P.
Girard, ``Ajax, fils de Telamon,'' 1905, in Revue des
etudes grecques, tome 18; J. Vurtheim, De Ajacie Origine,
Cultu, Patria (Leiden, 1907), accord. ing to whom he and Ajax
Oileus, as depicted in epos, were originally one, a Locrian
daemon somewhat resembling the giants. When this spirit put on
human form and became known at the Saronic Gulf, he developed
into the ``greater'' Ajax, while among the Locrians he remained
the ``lesser.'' In the article GREEK ART fig. 13 (from a
black-figured Corinthian vase) represents the suicide of Ajax.
AJMERE, or AJMER, a city of British India in Ra)putana.
which gives its name to a district and also,to a petty
province called Ajmere-Meirwara. It is situated in 26 deg.
27, N. lat. and 74 deg. 44, E. long., on the lower slopes
of Taragarh hill, in the Aravalli mountains. To the
north of the city is a large artificial lake called the
Anasagar, whence the water supply of the place is derived.
The chief object of interest is the darga, or tomb of a
famous Mahommedan saint named Mayud-uddin. It is situated at
the foot of the Taragarh mountain, and consists of a block of
white marble buildings without much pretension to architectural
beauty. To this place the emperor Akbar, with his empress,
performed a pilgrimage on foot from Agra in accordance
with the terms of a vow he had made when praying for a
son. The large pillars erected at intervals of two miles the
whole way, to mark the daily halting-place of the imperial
pilgrim, are still extant. An ancient Jain temple, now
converted into a Mahommedan mosque, is situated on the lower
slope of the Taragarh hill. With the exception of that part
used as a mosque, nearly the whole of the ancient temple
has fallen into ruins, but the relics are not excelled in
beauty of architecture and sculpture by any remains of Hindu
art. Forty columns support the r00f, but no two are alike,
and great fertility of invention is manifested in the
execution Of the ornaments. The summit of Taragarh hill,
overhanging Ajmere, is crowned by a foot, the lofty thick
battlements of which run along its brow and enclose the
table-land. The walls are 2 m. in circumference, and the
fort can only be approached by steep and very roughly paved
planes, commanded by the fort and the outworks, and by the
hill to the west. On coming into the hands of the English,
the fort Was dismantled by order of Lord William Bentinck,
and is now converted into a sanatorium for the troops at
Xasirabad. Ajmere was founded about the year 145 A.p. by
AJi, a Chauhan, who established the dynasty which continued
to rule the country (with many vicissitudes of fortune) while
the repeated waves of Mahommedan invasion swept over India,
until it eventually became an appanage of the crown Of Delhi in
