Ellora & Ajanta

There are over 100 caves at Ellora, cut into the basalt cliffs of the Charanandri Hills near Aurangabad, and 34 of them are open to the public. Several are not really caves at all, in that they have no roof.

Cave 16 is the reason the site is famous. The Kailash temple is the largest single monolithic rock excavation in the world, a chariot-shaped monument dedicated to Shiva, carved with sculptures of Hindu deities and relief panels summarising both of the major Hindu epics. It was not built up from blocks. Everything that is not temple was cut away and carried out.

The artwork dates from AD 600 to 1000, and the caves divide by faith: 17 Hindu, caves 13 to 29; 12 Buddhist, caves 1 to 12; and 5 Jain, caves 30 to 34. Each group carries the deities and mythologies of its own tradition, along with monasteries, and they were built close to one another. That proximity is usually read as illustrating the religious harmony of the period.

Construction spans two dynasties. The Rashtrakuta dynasty, ruling from 753 to 982, produced part of the Hindu and Buddhist caves; the Yadava dynasty, around 1187 to 1317, produced a number of the Jain caves.

Ellora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest rock-cut cave complexes in the world. It is a leading example of Indian rock-cut architecture, and the scale of the Kailash temple in particular is difficult to take in from photographs.

Funding came from royalty, traders and wealthy people of the region rather than from any single patron. The caves served as temples and as a rest stop for pilgrims, and the site sat on an ancient South Asian trade route, which is a large part of why so much was invested in a cliff face here. Four centuries of work by three faiths on the same rock is the detail that makes Ellora unlike anywhere else.