Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c47.2

c47.2

Ellora was probably regarded as a holy place from the earliest times by the principal religious communities of ancient India. Moreover its most important temples date from a period when complete toleration was observed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. At Ellora, side by side with Buddhist monasteries, which were constructed between the sixth and eighth centuries A.D., magnificent groups of early Brahmanical and Jain temples have been cut out of the rock. Most of the Hindu temples were probably constructed in the seventh and eighth centuries A D. They culminate in the Kailasa Temple, which belongs to the middle of the eighth century and is the finest monument of its kind in India. The earliest of the Jain Temples, the Indra Sabha, is probably contemporaneous with the Kailasa Temple while the latest of the Jain group appears to have been constructed in the thirteenth century.