Ellora Caves

Put your palm flat against the rock. It is dark grey basalt, cool even when the Deccan sun is high, and faintly rough, like fine sandpaper. Listen for a moment. Footsteps echo off stone that was never stacked or mortared. Every pillar, every staircase, every god and elephant around you was cut out of a single hillside. At Ellora, nobody built anything. They removed everything that was not the temple.

You are standing in the Charanandri hills, in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, in western India. The cliff runs for roughly two kilometres, and along it are thirty-four main caves. They are numbered from south to north. Most were carved between about the sixth and the tenth centuries. Some are simple monastic halls. Others are multi-storey temples. In 1983, UNESCO listed the whole complex as a World Heritage Site.

The first surprise is who made them. Ellora holds the work of three faiths side by side. Caves one to twelve are Buddhist. Caves thirteen to twenty-nine are Hindu. Caves thirty to thirty-four, at the northern end, are Jain. The periods of carving overlapped. For generations, monks, priests and patrons of different traditions worked on the same ridge. Walking from one end to the other, you move through centuries of religious thought in a single afternoon.

The rock itself made this possible. Ellora sits on the Deccan Traps, enormous layers of volcanic basalt that cooled millions of years ago. Basalt is hard but even-grained. A skilled carver can predict how it will split. There is no room for error, though. A wrong stroke cannot be patched with a new block. Look closely at the walls and you can still see tool marks — fine parallel grooves left by chisels more than a thousand years ago.

Begin with the Buddhist caves to the south. Most are viharas, which are monasteries with small cells where monks slept and studied. Cave twelve rises three storeys high. Locals call it Teen Tal, meaning three floors. Its rows of seated Buddhas line the upper hall in calm repetition. The carving here is restrained and orderly. It feels like a place designed for quiet, long hours of meditation, sheltered from the heat outside.

Cave ten is different, and easy to miss if you rush. It is a chaitya, a prayer hall, and it is often called the Vishwakarma cave, after the divine architect of Hindu tradition. Look up. The ceiling is carved into curved ribs that copy wooden roof beams — beams that were never needed, because the roof is solid rock. At the far end, a large seated Buddha sits in front of a stupa. Speak softly and listen to how the hall carries your voice.

Now walk north to cave sixteen, the Kailasa temple. This is the reason many people come. Carvers cut a deep trench into the hillside from above, isolating a huge block of rock. Then they shaped that block, working downward, into a complete temple with a shrine, halls, bridges and courtyards. The work is generally credited to the Rashtrakuta dynasty, and most often to King Krishna the First, in the eighth century.

The scale is hard to take in. Scholars estimate that the carvers removed many thousands of tonnes of stone. Figures of around two hundred thousand tonnes are often quoted, though no record of the work survives. The temple is dedicated to Shiva, and it represents Mount Kailash, his home in the Himalayas. Around the base, life-sized elephants appear to carry the whole structure on their backs. Two tall stone pillars stand in the courtyard like flagstaffs.

Look for one panel on the side of the main shrine. It shows the demon king Ravana, many-armed, trying to shake Mount Kailash. Above him, Shiva and Parvati sit calmly. Shiva simply presses down with one foot and pins Ravana beneath the mountain. Parvati leans toward her husband, and a companion turns to flee. It is one of the most celebrated sculptures in India, and it tells a whole story in one block of stone.

Here is a second detail most visitors walk past. In shaded corners of the ceilings and upper walls, you can find patches of old plaster and faint paint. Kailasa was not always bare grey. It was once coated and coloured, possibly white, to look like a snowy peak. Imagine the courtyard bright and painted, with lamps flickering in the halls. The plain stone we admire today is only the skeleton of that earlier appearance.

The other Hindu caves deserve time too. Cave twenty-one, known as Rameshwar, has graceful figures of the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna at its entrance. Cave twenty-nine, Dhumar Lena, is a broad pillared hall with large panels of Shiva's stories. During the monsoon, a seasonal waterfall pours down the cliff beside it. In the wet months the whole hillside turns green, and the caves fill with the sound of running water.

Finally, the Jain caves at the northern end. They are the latest group, and their carving is dense and delicate. Cave thirty-two, called Indra Sabha, has two storeys around a small courtyard. Look for the seated Tirthankaras, the liberated teachers of Jainism, and for a carved elephant and a tall pillar outside. The lotus patterns on the ceilings are very fine. Fewer people walk this far, so the halls are often quiet.

Before you leave, find a moment of stillness. Stand at the edge of a courtyard and look at the cliff face above you. The hill continues, untouched, just a few metres from the chisel marks. Notice how the light moves across the façades as the afternoon goes on. Then, as you walk back along the ridge, touch the rock once more. It is the same stone, cool and grey, that someone shaped by hand a very long time ago.