The Indian village of Ellora became famous throughout the world for its multi-storey cave complex of temples. The most grandiose and incredible of all Ellora's cave structures is undoubtedly Kailash (or Kailasanatha) - the world's largest monolithic structure carved into the rock.
Mysterious rock temple Kailash
In Ellora today you can find ancient Hindu sanctuaries (17 caves in the center), Buddhist (12 caves) and Jain (5 caves in the north). Hindu temples and shrines are the oldest of them. Jainism originated from Hinduism and is also older than Buddhism. The Jains were the first to adopt the Hindu architectural method of building temples in the form of a symbolic mountain. Who carved these cave temples is unknown. Maybe it was not Jains with Hindus, but the main caves of Ellora were created in time immemorial. It was recently discovered that the original temple was completely covered with white plaster.
A temple from the distant past
No one will know this anymore, but we can say for sure that divinity attracted Jains and Buddhists. That is why, when their religions evolved from Hinduism, they began to attach great importance to religious symbols and figures. This is perfectly visible from the Kailash temple, which is completely covered with very intricate carvings. What is especially interesting, until now almost nothing is known about the origin and creators of the Kailash temple. Scientists have not found any dates or even the slightest trace of a description of the structure.
Kailash (Kailasanatha) - a temple with a thousand-year history
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Some experts claim that it was carved into the rock hundreds of years ago, while others argue that the temple is already thousands of years old, it was just that it was modified by Buddhist and Jain monks. The inscriptions on the walls are very old and have practically collapsed due to time. Today they are almost impossible to read and decipher. According to local residents, the immensity of the temple conveys the infinity of the universe and it was blessed by Hindu sages and gurus.
The Grand Temple of Kailash (Kailasanatha)
Kailash was so unshakable that even several attempts by the invaders of Padishah Aurangzeb to break the temple columns and desecrate the "divine structure" only led to further extermination of the Mughals. Only minor damage was done to the elephant sculptures. The Kailash temple was actually not built - the whole structure was hewn out of one giant piece of rock, and the rock massif during the construction of the temple was hewn from top to bottom, without the use of scaffolding.
Temple that goes into the rocks
The temple, measuring 55x36 meters (with a total area of 1980 m²), is located in the center of a courtyard hewn into the rock, measuring 58 x 51 meters and extending 33 meters into the rock. The lower part of the temple is a pedestal 8 meters high, on which there are 3-meter statues of elephants and lions. Also, the Kailash temple is notable for the fact that it is literally all covered with very complex stone carvings. Remarkably, the size of this rock-cut temple is twice (and one and a half times higher) than the famous Parthenon in Athens.
A temple that was built for a century and a half
It has been estimated that 200,000 tons of rock had to be removed to build it. Scientists estimate that it took 7,000 workers and 150 years to complete the project. It is worth noting that all 34 caves of Ellora are not of natural origin, they were all carved by the Indians by hand from a monolithic rock. Although, as mentioned above, no one knows exactly when the cave complex was created, it is generally accepted that it was created between the fifth and tenth centuries AD. True, it is still not clear how this was done, since at that time there were no technologies that allowed this.
Kailash (Kailasanatha) - an incredible artifact from the past
Hypothetically, if such a temple was being built today, then at least 10 of the largest 10-ton JCB mining machines would be needed. Moreover, if in ideal conditions they dug 1000 tons of rock each, then one process of extracting the rock would take about 200 days of continuous work. The precision with which it would be possible to make such stone processing is unattainable even with modern technologies. Thus, manual labor would be required to literally carve a temple by a centimeter, so the time to create such a temple from scratch is difficult to imagine.
One of the most mysterious zrams on the planet
Additional mystery to the Kailash temple is given by mysterious narrow holes that are ubiquitous in the temple at a level of 1 meter from the floor, or even lower. If people did this, then 3 questions are not clear: what are these holes for, why they were made so low and how they were made of them (after all, they are very narrow and their edges are amazingly even). Repetition of such a feat, even with the use of modern technologies, is almost impossible, but the ancient Hindu sages managed to make a real miracle thanks to their spiritual strength, perseverance and devotion to their faith.