English: Ajanta amorous palace scene with servants, 5th century CE. The skin color and dress style has led some to identify some of these characters may be foreign and related to the embassy sent from Persia; this theory was proposed in early colonial era literature (Fergusson, 1879). However, after the review of Persian records, dating when the embassy was actually sent (7th-century), and the better dating of these frescoes and caves to the 5th-century by Walter Spink, this theory has largely been rejected. Further, given the diversity of skin color, tones and the diversity of dress culture in South Asia, along with limited evidence of how people dressed in pre-5th-century Greater India, the colonial era proposal that there are many foreigners in Ajanta frescoes has been by questioned and partly rejected by scholars such as Schlingloff (1988), Zin (2003) and others. There are some characters in these frescoes that are dressed in a style found in the artwork of northwest Indian subcontinent, Kushan and Saka-ruled regions. Thus, the basic hypothesis that the painters were showing a diversity of people from far away lands is valid.