The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c20.22

c20.22

The dedication of the Kailâsa temple to Siva's Himâlayan paradise was not an arbitrary choice; for it had a particular significance in reference to the tîrth of Ellora, which in the imagination of the pilgrim was a sacred place because the rocky hill and its watercourses seemed to reproduce in miniature the Himâlayan mountains and the holy rivers which had their sources there. The army of skilled masons Krishna I had at his command set themselves a gigantic task, which at that time was also a novel one. Instead of merely hollowing out the interior of a temple in the scarp of a hill, or sculpturing one in miniature from a boulder of granite, they cut down into the rock and, quarrying a pit from 50 to 100 feet deep, 250 feet in length, and 160 feet wide, carved out of the middle of it a full-size double-storied temple, considerably larger than the structural one which was its model, adding to it a series of magnificent chapels and monastic halls which were cut deep into the rock on three sides of the quarry, as shown in the transverse section of the temple, Pl. LXV.