Ellora Caves - Complete Guide (travel, history)

The Ellora Caves are a UNESCO World Heritage Site located near the city of Aurangabad in the state of Maharashtra. Let's take a look at their history, architectural details and travel information.

One of the most remarkable facts about Indian civilization is that almost all of its most important earliest monuments are caves. More than twelve hundred of these rock-cut sanctuaries (for they were man-made rather than natural) have been discovered, in all parts of the country. They were excavated over a period of a thousand years, between the third century B.C. and the tenth century A.D., by all the major religious groups – Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain. While the cave has always been a place of retreat for the hermit and ascetic, these sanctuaries served a communal as well as a monastic purpose. Some of them are veritable cathedrals in rock. Originally created as more permanent alternatives to shrines built of wood and bamboo, they continued to be excavated long after the development of building techniques in durable materials made their original advantages obsolete because for the monks, the very process of creating the temples was a process of spiritual growth.

There are famous examples of rock-cut sanctuaries elsewhere in the world – Abu Simbel or Petra, for example – but nowhere else did cave architecture reach such heights of achievement or play such a central part in the development of civilization. It is as if the cave served a need that the Indian psyche felt with a peculiar intensity. A particularly fine conglomeration of these sanctuaries is to be found at Ellora, in Maharashtra state.

History

Dating back over 1300 years, the cave temples of Ellora rank among the wonders of the ancient world. Here, from the 7th century AD – great armies of monks and craftsmen carved cathedrals, monasteries, and whole cities of frescoed, sculptured halls into the solid rock faces. Working with simple chisels and hammers and an ingenious system of reflecting mirrors to provide light, they cut away hundreds of thousands of tons of rock to create the cave temples. The precision of their planning, their knowledge of rock formations, and the delicacy and profusion of their art have created masterpieces that are truly unique wonders of the world, driven by a verve and sustained by a sacred patience beyond the grasp of modern humanity. The Ellora Caves are preceded by the Ajanta Caves in date by about 700 years. The original focus of activity was Ajanta, which was shifted to Ellora around the 7th century AD for unknown reasons.

The hills around Ellora are honeycombed with over a hundred caves, of which there are thirty-four principal ones, divided into three groups – Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. The 12 caves to the south are Buddhist, belonging to the Vajrayana sect (an esoteric sect of the Mahayana school), the 17 Hindu caves are dedicated to Shiva and lie in the center, and the Jain caves number five to the north and belong to the Digambara sect of that religion. The fact that shrines of these three major faiths are found side by side testifies both to the religious tolerance of India and to the custom of establishing a religious monument in a place already sanctified and regarded as holy. Ellora had probably been a pilgrimage spot long before the first caves were excavated here.

Moreover, it lay near the junction of two major trade routes, which ran from the centers of Pathan to Broach, and Ajanta to Ujjain. Thus its position was ideally suited to the itinerant life of the monks who lived here and to the regular visits of pilgrims who made Ellora one of their stopping places, especially at the time of seasonal festivals.

Two great dynasties were the patrons of the Ellora excavations: the Chalukyas of the Deccan (A.D. 550-642) and their successors, the Rashtrakutas (A.D. 757-973), who also built the shrine of the Elephanta Caves. Unlike the famous caves at Ajanta, which lay deserted and forgotten for several centuries, Ellora seems to have been well-known as an active pilgrimage place for much of its history. There are references to the site in contemporary Rashtrakuta inscriptions, and both Arab and European travelers refer to it in their journals.

Architecture

At Ellora, the focus is on sculpture, which covers the walls in an exquisitely ornate mass. In the Buddhist caves, the carvings preserve a serene reflection of the Buddhist philosophy. But in the subsequent Hindu

caves, they acquire a certain exuberance, a throbbing vitality. Gods and demons do fearful battle, Lord Shiva angrily flails his eight arms, elephants rampage, eagles swoop, and lovers intertwine. Unlike Ajanta, where rhe temples were chopped out of a steep cliff, the caves at Ellora were dug into the slope of a hill in a north-south direction (they face the west and could receive the light of the setting sun)

Main Caves

Cave 1 (two stories) and Cave 3 (three stories) are remarkable for having more than one floor. The two caves form a monastery behind an open courtyard; the facade looms nearly 15 meters (50 feet) high. Although this facade is simple, the interior is lavish. This block of rock was gouged into a ground-floor hall, a shrine on the story above it, and another hall on the top story with a gallery of Buddhas seated under trees and parasols.

The largest of the Buddhist caves is Cave 5, 36 meters by 17 meters (117 feet by 56 feet). It was probably used as a classroom for young monks, and its roof appears to be supported by 24 pillars. Working their way down, sculptors first “built” the roof before they “erected” the pillars.

Cave 6 contains a statue of the Hindu goddess of learning, Saraswati, in the company of Buddhist figures.

Cave 10 is the "Carpenter's Cave," where Hinduism and Buddhism meet again. Here, the stonecutters reproduced the timbered roofs of their day over a richly decorated façade that imitates masonry work. Inside this chaitya, the only Buddhist chapel at Ellora, the main work of art is a huge image of Buddha.

The garba griha at Ellora.

The immediate successors to the Buddhist caves are the Hindu caves, and a step inside them is enough to pull the visitor up short. It's another world – another universe – in which the calm contemplation of the seated Buddhas gives way to the dynamic cosmology of Hinduism, in which mythical gods seemingly come alive from stone. These sculptures are estimated to have been created around the 7th and 8th centuries. They depict goddesses at battle; Shiva flailing the air with his eight arms; elephants big as life groaning under their burdens; boars, eagles, peacocks, and monkeys prancing around what has suddenly turned into a zoo; and lovers striking poses that leave the imagination somewhere far behind.

The Kailashnath Temple

Ellora is dominated by the mammoth Kailashnath temple complex, or Cave 16. Dedicated to Shiva, the complex is a replica of his legendary abode at Mount Kailash in the Himalayas. The world's largest monolithic structure, approximately twice the area of the Parthenon in Greece and 1.5 times as high, the Kailasha reveals the genius, daring, and skill of its artisans.

To create the complex, an army of 7000 stonecutters worked for 150 years, starting at the top of the cliff, where they removed 930,000 cubic meters (3 million cubic feet) of rock to create a vast pit with a free standing rock left in the center. Out of this single slab, 86 meters (276 feet) long and 48 meters (154 feet ) wide, they created Shiva's abode, which includes the main temple, a series of smaller shrines, and galleries (small rooms) built into a wall that encloses the entire complex. Nearly every surface is exquisitely sculpted with epic themes.

Around the courtyard numerous friezes illustrate the legends of Shiva and stories from the great Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. One interesting panel on the eastern wall relates the origin of the symbol for Shiva, the linga. Another frieze on the outer wall of the main sanctuary in the southern side of the courtyard shows the demon Ravana shaking Kailash, a story from the Ramayana. There was also said to have been a statue of Patanjali, the father of modern yoga and the author of the Yoga Sutras, though it has now been lost to looters.

Travel

The caves are open from dawn to dusk, from Wednesday to Monday. The ticket costs Rs.10 for Indians and 5USD for overseas visitors. The Ellora caves are only 30 kilometers or 18 miles from Aurangabad in Maharashtra. Aurangabad and Bombay are only about 45 minutes apart by air. The Government of India Tourist Office in Aurangabad oversees about 40 multilingual tour guides who can be hired through its office, the MTDC office, also in Aurangabad. Guides are also available at the ticket office at the Kailashnatha Temple. Archaeological Survey guides can be also hired without prearrangement at the sites, often at a lower rate, but there's no guarantee one will be available when you want one.

The Ellora Dance Festival, held annually in December/January, draws top classical Indian dancers and musicians from around the country to perform outdoors against the magical backdrop of the Ellora Caves.