ELLORA, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA, February 3, 2008: The site of Ellora, on the outskirts of the city of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, witnessed the grand culmination of more than a thousand years of the rock-cutting tradition. From the 6th century A.D. up to the 10th century A.D., the last man-mad caves for the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain faiths were created.
One of Ellora’s excavations is a cave called the Ramesavara, from the second half of the 6th century. Nandi, the bull Lord Siva rides, sits devotedly outside with its gaze fixed on the Siva Linga in the sanctum inside. The cave has some of the most refined sculptures of Ellora. On panels upon the walls are larger-than-life scenes depicting Siva.
The Kailasanatha temple is surely one of the great wonders of the world. It replicates a vast, multi-story structure, all of it carved out of a single piece of rock. Several hundred thousand tons of rock would have been carefully cut out of the heart of the mountain and removed, all of it with precision and detailed planning. It is a wondrous, mythical feat, believable only because the result is there for all to see.
The entire temple was originally plastered and painted on the inside and the outside. Today, only a few paintings survive on the ceiling of the mandapam. Fragments of plaster and color on the outer surfaces show that there were at least three layers of paint over the centuries. A contemporaneous copper-plate inscription states that the architect of the temple stood before its grandeur in amazement and said, “Was it indeed I who built this?” The record goes on to say that the gods who passed above the temple in their celestial chariots could not believe it was the work of mere mortals.