Kailasa Temple, Ellora

Understanding what "monolithic" means here

Most rock-cut architecture is horizontal: you tunnel into a cliff face and hollow out a hall. Ellora has thirty-four such caves, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain, along one escarpment.

Kailasa is different in kind. The excavation went top-down. The builders removed the rock around where the temple would be, leaving a solid mass in the middle, and then carved that mass into a temple — tower, hall, gateway, Nandi shrine, two free-standing pillars, life-size elephants — all of it one continuous piece of the mountain, connected to bedrock underneath.

The consequence is that nothing could be corrected. A misplaced chisel cannot be filled and a wall cannot be rebuilt. The entire design had to be resolved before the first cut, and then executed downward through solid basalt.

Scale and attribution

The temple measures roughly fifty metres long, thirty-three wide and thirty high, and estimates of the rock removed run from 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes. It was begun under Krishna I of the Rashtrakuta dynasty, who reigned around 756–773 CE.

It did not appear from nowhere. Kailasa is modelled on the Virupaksha Temple at Pattadakal, which was itself modelled on the Kailasanathar Temple at Kanchipuram. Three buildings, three centuries, one idea travelling across the subcontinent — and seeing all three in sequence is one of the more satisfying things an architecturally minded traveller can do in India.

The single greatest relief in Indian art

On the south side of the plinth is a panel showing Ravana attempting to lift Mount Kailash. The demon king, trapped beneath the mountain, braces his many arms and heaves; the rock strains; Parvati above recoils in alarm and clutches at Shiva, who calmly presses down with one toe and pins Ravana for ten thousand years.

The carving conveys weight, effort and stillness simultaneously, in stone, on a mountain that is itself carved from a mountain. If you look at nothing else at Ellora, look at this.

What to look for

The elephant frieze at the base of the plinth, carved so that the animals appear to be carrying the entire temple on their backs.

The view from above. A path leads up the cliff to the level the sculptors started from. From there you see the temple sitting in the pit it was cut out of, and the scale of what was removed becomes comprehensible in a way it never is from the courtyard.

The traces of white plaster. The temple was originally rendered white to resemble the snow of Mount Kailash — Shiva's Himalayan home, reproduced in the Deccan.

Grishneshwar, one kilometre away — the twelfth and smallest of the Jyotirlingas. Seeing the largest monolithic temple and a Jyotirlinga in one afternoon is a very good use of a day.

The other thirty-three caves

Kailasa is Cave 16, and most visitors see it and leave. That is a mistake, because the thing that makes Ellora unique in the world is not the monolith — it is the company it keeps.

Along two kilometres of escarpment, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain excavations sit side by side, cut over roughly four centuries as patronage and religious fashion shifted. Nowhere else are three major traditions carved into the same cliff in sequence.

Caves 1–12 are Buddhist, the earliest group. Cave 10, the Vishvakarma or Carpenter's Cave, is a chaitya hall with a stone ceiling carved to imitate wooden roof beams — a fossil of the timber architecture that preceded rock-cut work — and a seated Buddha before the stupa. Cave 12, Tin Thal, is three full storeys.

Caves 13–29 are Hindu, including Kailasa. Cave 29, Dhumar Lena, is often overlooked and shouldn't be: a cruciform hall on the Elephanta model with massive guardian figures.

Caves 30–34 are Jain, at the far northern end, and almost nobody walks that far. They are smaller and later, but the ceiling paintings and the fine, obsessive detail of Cave 32, Indra Sabha, are among the best carving on the site. Take the free shuttle if walking the full length is too much.

Ajanta, one hundred kilometres away

Ellora is almost always paired with Ajanta, and the two are entirely different propositions.

Ajanta is older — roughly second century BCE to sixth century CE — exclusively Buddhist, and cut into a horseshoe gorge above a river. It was abandoned, forgotten, and grown over until a British hunting party stumbled on it in 1819, and that long sealed neglect is why its paintings survived.

The murals of Ajanta are the single greatest body of ancient painting in India and among the most important anywhere in Asia. Caves 1, 2, 16 and 17 hold the finest of them — the Bodhisattva Padmapani in Cave 1 is the image reproduced everywhere. Lighting is deliberately dim and flash is banned; give your eyes ten minutes to adjust before deciding you cannot see anything.

Ajanta closes on Mondays and Ellora on Tuesdays. Two full days, based in Aurangabad, covers both without rushing.