Ellora Caves

The Ellora Caves are a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, India (now renamed to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar district). It is one of the largest rock-cut Hindu temple cave complexes in the world, with artwork dating from the period 600–1000 CE, also including several Buddhist and Jain "caves". The complex is a leading example of Indian rock-cut architecture, and several are not strictly "caves" in that they have no roof.

Quotes

• A hoIlowed-out space in living rock is a totally dIfferent environment from a building constructed of quarried stone. The human organism responds in each case with a different kind of empathy. Buildings are fashioned in sequence by a series of uniformly repeatable elements, segment by segment. from a foundation upwards to the conjuction of walls and roof; the occupant empathizes with a visible tension between gravity and soaring tensile strength. Entering a great building is to experience an almost imperceptible tensing in the skeletal muscles in response to constructional tension. Caves, on the other hand, are scooped out by a downward plunge of the chisel from ceiling to floor in the direction of gravity; the occupant empathizes with an invisible but sensed resistance, an unrelenting presence in the rock enveloping him; sculpted images and glowing pigments on the skin of the rock well forth from the deeps. To enter an Indian cave sanctuary is to experience a relaxation of physical tension in response to the implacable weight and density of solid rock.
  • Richard Lannoy, Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• The design of the Kailasa remained, for all time, the perfect model of a Shivalinga, - the temple craftsman's vision of Shiva's wondrous palace in his Himalayan glacier, where in his Yogi's cell the Lord of the Universe, the great magician, controls the cosmic forces by the power of thought; the holy rivers, creating the life in the world below, enshrined in His matted locks; Parvati, His other Self, the Universal Mother, watching by His side.
  • Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell (1861-1934), quoted in The Splendour That Was India, Survey Of Indian Culture And Civilisation by Shah K. T.

• The Kailash temple at Ellora, a complete sunken Brahmanical temple carved out in the late seventh and eighth centuries A.D. is over 100 feet high, the largest structure in India to survive from ancient times, larger than the Parthenon. This representation of Shiva's mountain home, Mount Kailash in the Himalaya, took more than a century to carve, and three million cubic feet of stone were removed before it was completed. An inscription records the exclamation of the last architect on looking at his work: “Wonderful! O How could I ever have done it?”
  • Richard Lannoy, quoted in Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day. Claude Alphonso Alvares, 1991