On the 28th of April 1819, a British officer hunting tiger looked up and saw a carved facade in the cliff above him. He had just discovered Ajanta, 30 Buddhist caves abandoned for over a thousand years. Inside were paintings from the 2nd century BC with a naturalism that places them among the greatest works of art ever produced in the ancient world. Cave 1 holds the Padmapani bodhisattva, so psychologically tender that art historians...