The Kailasa Temple at Ellora, in India’s Maharashtra state, looks like a freestanding stone temple. Its builders created it by cutting into the surrounding volcanic rock, leaving the temple itself in place.
Carved out of a mountain
It is Cave 16 of the Ellora complex, whose monuments were excavated for Buddhist, Hindu and Jain communities over several centuries.
Rather than assembling quarried blocks, the builders cut the temple directly from the basalt. Researchers describe the work as proceeding from the top downward.
The Kailasa Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva, is attributed by the Archaeological Survey of India to the eighth-century reign of the Rashtrakuta ruler Krishna I.
The scale of the excavation raises questions about how the work was organized and how the rock was removed.
Furthermore, the Kailasa is just one of the many temples in Ellora.
In fact, the Ellora hills contain nearly one hundred caves, excavated from the basalt cliffs of the Charanandri Hills.
The Archaeological Survey of India describes 34 of the caves as well known and visited by tourists.
Indian epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana describe the Brahmastra, a legendary weapon. Those stories do not establish how Kailasa was carved.
Researchers continue to study how the builders organized the excavation and sculpture of the temple.
