Ajanta caves to have QR codes to provide info of paintings to visitors, says ASI official

The famous Ajanta caves in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad will soon have QR codes at the entrance to provide information to visitors about the paintings there, a senior Archaeological Survey of India official said on Monday.

The ASI is working to make the system available before the city hosts a G20-related event, the official said.

The 'first inception meet' of Women 20 (W20) as part of India's presidency of G20 will be held in the city next month.

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The Women 20 was set up in 2015 to ensure gender considerations figure in G20 discussions.

The paintings in the fifth-century Ajanta caves illustrate the Jataka tales. They are in the dark area of caves where human eyes take time to get acclimatised. To make tourists learn more about the paintings they are going to see, the ASI will bring them on QR codes, the official said.

“Tourists get a maximum of ten minutes in a cave to see the paintings. They are randomly painted and not in a sequence. It takes time for our eyes to acclimatise to the poor lighting in the caves,” ASI’s Superintendent Archaeologist Milan Kumar Chauley told PTI.

The QR codes will be installed outside the caves and a temporary internet connection will also be made available on the rocky premises, he said.

"Tourists can scan the codes and find out the cave details, paintings in that cave with illustrations and the Jataka tales related to it,” Chauley said.

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"We are working on the data that has to be uploaded on the QR codes. The basic work of this project will be finished prior to the W20 meet of G20 in Aurangabad next month,” he added.

The project also aims to ensure that visitors spend less time inside the Ajanta caves as the moisture build-up due to the presence of too many tourists affects the ancient paintings, said a source.

General details of Devgiri (Daulatabad), Bibi Ka Maqbara, Ellora caves and Aurangabad caves will also be made available in multiple languages through the QR codes, Chauley said.

Aurangabad Municipal Commissioner Abhijeet Choudhary has also asked officials to display data of historical places in Aurangabad city through QR codes, another official said. This work will be done through the Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited.