Kailasa | Impressions

By T. V. Antony Raj

The village of Ellora lies 18 miles (30 km) north-west of Aurangabad in the state of Maharashtra in India. It is an archaeological site well-known for its monumental caves that are an epitome of Indian rock-cut architecture.

Historians and archaeologists conjecture that the Rashtrakuta dynasty built the temples found there. Ellora is also known as Elapura in the Rashtrakuta Kannada literature.

Map of the 34 Ellora Caves (Source: wondermondo.com)

There are 34 caves at Ellora, excavated out of the vertical face of the Charanandri hills, extending more than two kilometres. There are 12 Buddhist caves (1–12), 17 Hindu caves (13–29), and five Jain caves (30–34). All the caves are in proximity revealing the religious harmony that prevailed in the region during this period. Now, the Ellora cave complex is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India and is a World Heritage Site.

Unlike Ajanta, the Ellora caves due to their close proximity to the trade routes were never lost to oblivion. From numerous written records, we learn that travelers from outside India visited the Ellora caves regularly. The 10th-century Arab historian, geographer happens to be the earliest recorded visitors. In 1352, prior to the visit of the founder of the Bahmani sultanate, Majumdar Muzaffar Ala–Din Bahman Shah, whose original name was Hasan Gangu, the approach roads to the caves were repaired. The Sultan camped at the site and visited the caves.

The other historical visitors were:

Persian historian Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah (1560-1620) known as Firishta or Ferishta,
A French traveller in the East, Jean de Thévenot (June 16, 1633 – November 28, 1667), a linguist, natural scientist and botanist who wrote extensively about his journeys,
An Italian writer and traveller, Niccolao Manucci (April 19, 1638–1717) who worked in the Mughal court in the service of Dara Shikoh, Shah Alam, Raja Jai Singh and Kirat Singh.
Sir Charles Warre Malet, 1st Baronet (December 30, 1752 – January 24, 1815), a diplomat who served in the British East India Company as a Resident in the court of the Peshwa Mahrattas.
John B. Seely, was a Captain in the Bombay Infantry, and later in the military service of his Highness the Raja of Nagpur. In 1824, he published the book, “The Wonders of Elora; Or, the Narrative of a Journey to the Temples and Dwellings Excavated Our of a Mountain of Granite, and Extending Upwards of a Mile and a Quarter, at Elora, in the East Indies by the Route of Poona, Ahmed-Nuggur, and Toka, Returning by Dowlutabad and Aurangabad; With Some General Observations on the People and Country”.

The Kailasanatha temple

The Kailasnatha Temple, Ellora (Source: rediff.com)

Among all the cave temples at Ellora, the unrivalled centrepiece is Cave 16 – the Kailasanatha temple, designed to recall Mount Kailash, the abode of Lord Shiva. It is also known as Kailasa temple. It is an unrivalled work of rock architecture, a monument that has always excited and astonished travellers.

Some historians and archaeologists believe that the majestic Kailasanatha temple was created before any other temple in the Ellora cave complex.

Fragment of Old Kannada inscription (765 AD) from Hattimattur village of Rashtrakuta King Krishna I (Source: Epigraphia Indica and Record of the Archæological Survey of India, Volume 6). — Fragment of Old Kannada inscription (765 AD) from Hattimattur village of Rashtrakuta King Krishna I (Source: Epigraphia Indica and Record of the archaeological Survey of India, Volume 6)..

As attested in Kannada inscriptions of 775, King Krishna I of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty who ruled from 756 –774, responsible for building 18 Shiva temples, commissioned the building of the Kailasanatha temple.

The temple encompasses Dravidian architecture. It does not contain any of the Shikharas common to the Nagara style. It was built similar to the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal in Karnataka. King Krishna I employed architects from the Pallava kingdom in South India. The walls of the temple have marvellous sculptures from Hindu mythology, including Ravana, Shiva, and Parvathi while the ceilings have paintings. At first, white plaster covered the walls of the Kailasanatha temple to simulate the snow-covered Mount Kailas in Tibet.

Though the Kailasanatha temple looks like a freestanding, multi-storied temple complex, it is, in fact, a monolithic structure carved out of one single rock. It is the largest monolithic human-created structure in the world. It covers an area of over 42,500 square feet (3,948 square metres). The Kailasanatha Temple is 276 by 154 feet (84 by 47 metres) wide. It has a larger area than the Parthenon temple on the Athenian Acropolis, in Greece. Measured at the stylobate, the dimensions of the base of the Parthenon are 228 by 101 feet (69.5 by 30.9 metres) or 23,030 square feet (2,140 square metres).

The Kailasanatha temple is notable for its vertical excavation. Carvers started at the top of the rock and excavated downwards. In all the other temples and caves in the rest of the world and even in Ellora, the carvers hewed out rock from the front and carved as they went along using the rock cutting technique called “cut-in monolith“.

It was only at Kailasanatha temple the architects used the exact opposite technique called “cut-out monolith“. They worked downwards and hewed out all the unnecessary rock. After that, the sculptors chiselled the sculptures and intricate designs. This work would have required extreme planning and precision work to avoid damage to the completed work. Just imagine the colossal amount of rock removed to create this pillar.

Ground plan of Kailashnatha Temple at Ellora Caves, India. From "A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon." Author John Murray (Firm) — Ground plan of Kailasanatha Temple at Ellora Caves, India. From “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon.” Author John Murray (Firm)

All the carvings on the Kailasanatha temple are on more than one level.

The temple structure begins with a two-storied gopuram or gateway. It serves to screen the sacred temple from the outside world.

Columned arcade at the Kailasanatha Temple carved out of the surrounding cliff face punctuated by sculpted panels, and alcoves. (Source: campoamor-photography.com)

On entering the temple premises, we come to a U-shaped courtyard edged by a columned arcade three stories high, punctuated by huge sculpted panels, and alcoves with enormous sculptures of deities.

In the middle of this courtyard are two hewn out two-storied monolithic temple structures, each about 23 feet (7 metres) high.

The first structure is the Nandi Mandapa – the traditional Dravidian Shivaite shrine housing the bull “Nandi“.

One of the dhwajasthambhas, obelisk-like monolithic carved pillar at Kailash temple (Source: wondermondo.com)

Two 50-feet-high dhwajasthambhas, obelisk-like monolithic carved pillars that dwarf the humans standing beside them, flank the Nandi Mandapa. Decorated with frieze carvings, it would have taken years of work to create such huge structures.

Shiva lingam at Kailash temple - (Source - Sanjay Acharya - Wikimedia Commons) — Shiva lingam at Kailash temple – (Source – Sanjay Acharya – Wikimedia Commons)

Then comes the central main Shiva temple housing the lingam, a symbol of the energy and potential of the Hindu god Shiva.

The vimanam (steeple), that crowns the Garbhagriha, the Sanctum sanctorum of the temple rises to a height of about 90 feet., and about 120 feet (36.6 metres) high.

Life-size elephants carved on the base of the Shiva temple (Source: wondermondo.com)

Elaborate illustrative carvings decorate the lower storeys of both the Nandi Mandapa and the Shiva temple. Life-size elephants carved on the base of the Shiva temple give us the impression that the elephants are holding the structure aloft.

In the early days of construction, stone flying bridges connected these galleries to the central buildings, perhaps to remove the debris chiselled out from the columned arcades, galleries, the central buildings, etc. Those flying bridges must have collapsed or removed after constructing the temple.

Most historians and archaeologists presume it took 26 years between 757 and 783 to build the temple, during the reign of King Krishna I and nine years after his death.

There are no records of the monstrous task of hewing out a colossal amount of rock, about 400,000 tonnes, to construct the Kailasanatha temple. Some writers state the amount of hewed rock as 200,000 tonnes.

To find out if historians could be right about the 26 years of construction of the temple, let us do a simple arithmetic calculation. Let us just focus only on the removal of rock from the site. We will assume the workers toiled 12 hours per day, for 26 years to remove 400,000 tonnes of rock as the historians claim. So, 15,384 tonnes of rock removed every year. This means the workers removed 42 tonnes of rock every day, which gives us 1.75 tonnes of rock removed every hour. An impossible task which no groups of humans could have done at that time.

From the chisel marks found on walls of this temple, archaeologists assume that the carvers used three types of chisels pointing to three different periods of the Rashtrakuta dynasty.

Inscriptions on the Kailasanatha temple itself range from 9th to 15th century. So, we can conclude that it would have taken not 26 years but centuries of human labour to create the Kailasanatha temple.

Click on this line to view 155 photographs of the Ellora Caves.

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