Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Ajanta Caves are thirty rock-cut Buddhist monuments carved into a horseshoe-shaped cliff of Deccan basalt in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India. These structures span two distinct construction periods that began around the second century BCE and ended approximately 480 CE.
The earliest group dates from the Satavahana dynasty era between 100 BCE and 100 CE while the later phase occurred under the Vakataka dynasty during the reign of Emperor Harishena. Most surviving murals date from the second phase between 460 and 480 CE according to Walter Spink's research on inscriptions and artistic styles.
British officer John Smith discovered Cave 10 on the 28th of April 1819 while hunting tigers with a local shepherd boy guiding him to the entrance. He asked villagers to bring axes spears torches and drums to cut down tangled jungle growth blocking access to the monastic halls before his name was scratched over a bodhisattva painting.
Cave 17 spans thirty-four point five meters by twenty-five point six three meters and includes some of the best-preserved murals known anywhere in the complex. It contains thirty major murals depicting various Jatakas including Shaddanta Hasti Hamsa and Vessantara stories alongside scenes of shipwrecks and princesses applying makeup.
Cave 10 measures thirty point five meters long and contains thirty-nine octagonal pillars in its vast prayer hall. The structure features an apsidal shape with a row of octagonal columns supporting a vaulted ceiling above a circumambulation path surrounding a central stupa.