16/10/2021
Hidden Gems of INDIA - Ellora Kailasa
One of the best kept secrets of the Ancient World, nominated as Ellora Cave-16 but famously known today as Ellora Kailasa is the central part of a large Cave Temple Complexes of Ajanta and Ellora in Western India, designated as UNESCO-World Heritage Sites. Once an Ancient City known as Elapura, located at the edge of the Deccan Plateau amidst the great Western Sahyadri Mountain Ranges. Almost forgotten in the History Books and by the leftover Humanity in general. This bustling ancient town of the Aila Chandravanshis has stood as a silent witness to the chaos and peace that ensued in the Land of the Bharatas.
The Kailasa or the Kailasanatha, is the unrivaled centerpiece of Ellora. This is designed to resemble the Mount Kailash of Tibet, the abode of Lord "ShiVa". Ellora Kailasa is the largest monolithic structure in the world, carved out as a top-down architectural element from a single Volcanic Basalt rock formation. Within the courtyard of the Inner Complex, is the massive multi-level temple shrine with a pyramidal geometric form replicating the real Mount Kailasa of Tibet the Holy of Holies! Kailasa Temple seemingly appears like a freestanding, multi-storeyed complex, but it was carved out of a monolithic Basalt Rock Hill. It also contains the largest cantilevered rock ceiling in the discovered world, today.
The other caves of Ajanta and Ellora may be superb examples of rock “cut-in” penetrative architecture, but Kailasa Temple is unique for it's rock “cut-down” destructive technique as also seen in Udaygiri & Khandagiri of Odisha and Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.
The carving of the temple started from the top (shikhara) of the mountain and moved down. This mountain has been treated by the temple architects as if it was just a mound of clay, they did not add anything to the structure but rather just uncovered the rocks from the Basalt Rock formation with extreme precision and supreme accuracy. Leaving behind a marvel of human accomplishment that one can easily describe as one of the biggest architectural wonders of the world. While the Pyramids at Giza and the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico take centrestage due to their immense size and shape, the Kailasa Ellora takes the pinnacle of architectural complexity and dexterity to a scale surpassing anything ever done before or tried after.
The magnitude at which the work was undertaken is simply enormous and one cannot describe in mere words, but it helps to give a statistical analogy of it's scale and complexity. It covers twice the area of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece and is 1.5 times high entailing in removal of more than 200,000 tonnes of excess rock.
The rear wall of it's excavated courtyard is,
276 feet (84m) deep, 154 feet (47m) wide and 109 ft (33m) high, with a total volume of 4,633,000 cubic feet (ft3).
The Main Temple proper is,
164 feet (50m) deep, 109 feet (33m) wide, and 105 feet (32m) high, with a total volume of 1,877,000 cubic feet (ft3).
However, there is still no evidence of the estimated 200,000 tonnes of excess rock in nearby vicinity neither any structure that could be realised with the entire excess material. It is generally believed that the nearby Daulatabad Fort Complex (Devagiri) could have used some of the excess material, even if it's a mere 1 % percent of the total excess of the Kailasa and the other neighboring Ellora Cave sites.
Art historian Sharada Srinivasan considers that the work at such cave temples was started by levelling the area above the temple and exactly measuring the silhouette of the future temple from above. A holographic scale of the temple plan could have been etched in stone prior to when the excavations began. The entire Kailasa Enclosure must have been the greatest feat of engineering of it's time, considering that the margin of error anywhere in the entire temple enclosure is nearly nil or almost negligible. Some errors are evidently due to later modifications and extra-polations by the annexing hierarchy of the indigenous Kingdoms, that consistently tried their best in preserving and beautifying the Site one more notch up the scale.
Entire Ellora Cave Complex shows evidence of atleast 5 different phases of architectural modifications by the Ancient Kingdoms and it's quite evident in changes to smaller iconographies, painting diversity and extra add-ons to the delicately carved pillar columns to the Niche Wall reliefs themselves. The earliest form of the Temple site may have been relatively less iconographic in nature, collossal work of art nonetheless. Contributions to the present day Kailasa Architecture can be inferred from the earliest Ailas, the Pallavas, Western Chalukyas, Banvasi Kadambas, Rashtrakutas and even as recent as the 18th Century Malwa Maratha Queen, Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar, who reigned for 30 years and was a great donor patron for many temples of India ravaged by the invasionary forces of some of the barbaric kingdoms. She was affectionately known as Lokmata Devi Ahilya (People's Mother, a title bestowed earlier to the legendary Sita of Ramachandra, Gauri/Parvati of Shiva).
While it is easier to enjoy the marvels of the temple, but one would never fail to notice a feeling of great sadness and anger at the sheer uncalled for deliberate disfigurement of many statues, human and animal sculptures. The zealots who inflicted such damage didn’t realize that they were striking at a unique, irreplaceable ancient human heritage! Despite all the disfigurement, the still standing tall and beautiful, Kailasa temple is a living testimony to the pinnacle of temple architecture and achievements of ancient civilizations. A legacy that was carried on continuously for ages, until the abandoned phases of the last Millenium.
Unlike other rock-cut sites in the Western Deccan, such as Ajanta, Pitalkhora and other Cave Groups, the Ellora was never ‘rediscovered’. It has always been a holy spot among the locals of the Land, generally under the name of Verul of Elapura or as Manikeshwara, from the legendary Queen Manikavati of the Ailas a Chandravanshi Kingdom, attracting pilgrims throughout the centuries down to the present day. Some of the cave-temples have been inhabited from time to time by yogis and yoginis who were known for their visions and ascetic practices. Moughal Aurangazeb, paid a visit to the site on more than one occasion, presumably from nearby Khuldabad. Ever since the first European visitors in the sixteenth century, Ellora has attracted chroniclers, antiquarians, scholars, and, in more recent years, ever-increasing numbers of tourists. The current dating of this ancient site is attributed to the Rashtrakutas of 8th Century CE by the European Chronographers, which is a hap-hazard estimation than an exact timeperiod as generally documented in indigenous sources.
The European chroniclers have also claimed that the dating of Kailasa temple site to 8th Century CE is only an approximation and not definite even by their standards, yet the Modern intrepretation is such that most are convinced of it's authenticity. Hence most articles and online knowledge bases claim the 8th Century chronology. However, one can study the reason behind this chronological issue and know why the Rashtrakutas of 8th Century are generally mentioned as the creators or sanctioners of this site despite a contrasting evidence. For example, a Copper Plate engraving of Rashtrakuta King Krishna I during his reign in 8th Century CE written in Devanagari Script, mentions about the ancient temple site of Kailasa Ellora. The exact Sanskrit transliteration in reality reads that, King Krishna I was deeply mesmerised when He visited the Kailasa Temple site which is reverred since great antiquity and had commented that whoever created such a marvellous work of art in antiquity ought to be bowed down to, and even the Sthapati/Sculptor himself might have been surprised to see His creation after it's completion!
So, it's imperative from the above epigraphic evidence that Rashtrakuta King Krishna I was referring to the Sthapati/Sculptor of legendary antiquity in the past and not a contemporary during His reign. It is clear that early 18th Century chroniclers had made a terrible effort in their Sanskrit studies and literal translations. Moreover the Bagumra copper inscriptions were located almost hundreds of kilometres away from the actual site when such a claim of 8th Century timeperiod was made in the 19th Century.
Kailasa consists of a gateway, antechamber, assembly hall, sanctuary and towers. Almost every surface is lavishly embellished with symbols and figures from the Puranas (sacred Sanskrit Encyclopedia). Unlike other caves at Ajanta and Ellora, Kailasa temple has a huge courtyard that is open to the sky, surrounded by intricately carved wall of galleries several stories high. The Kailasa temple can be seen as an illustration of one of those occasions when the Minds, Hearts and Hands work in unison towards the consummation of a Supreme Divine ideal.
The Gopura (gateway) and Prakaras (enclosure walls) on both sides of the enclosure are carved out in the foreground from the rock in-situ, behind which spreads a precinct as extensive as 45m in width and 85m in depth. In the center is the gigantic sculpted monolithic Main Shrine, contiguous in it's entirety and substance to the ground. Around the precincts, there are some subordinate niche cave temples excavated in the rock on both sides of the enclosure.
Earlier in it's active phase, atleast during the First Millenium CE, the temple was covered entirely with white plaster and intricately painted walls depicting Hindu Traditions apart from the many bas-reliefs in Stone. A mixture of Lime, Cannabis H**p and other herbal concoction was plastered on it's entire surface area periodically, which strangely protected the monument from elements since great antiquity.
When passing through the Main gateway, one faces a rock-carved two-story pavilion for the Nandi (A Bull, known as the vehicle/vahana of Lord Shiva), accompanied with a colossal monumental Dhvaja Stambha (Flag Post/Pillar) on both sides. The second floor of the Nandi Pavilion is connected to the upper floor of the Entrance Gateway and the porch of the main shrine by stone bridges. The Main Shrine temple consists of the Garbhagriha (sanctum) and the Mandapa (Seeker's Hall) as usual. The tower-like Vimana or Shikara (Pyramidal Obelisk) above the Sanctum attains to 32m in height from the ground.
A visit to Ellora Kailasa is a spiritual journey. Every spiritual journey takes the seeker from the Root Chakra (Muladhara) to the Crown Chakra (Sahasra). Kailasa temple is constructed with principles from the tradition of Vedic Hindu architecture. In it's layout, as seen in the south elevation, one can see all the elements of a temple architecture. Lengthwise it represents the body of the deity (Vastu Purusha). Every structure of the temple has a significance and nothing has been carved/excavated without a meaning. The lengthwise elevation represents the Chakras in a human body. It is of immense importance to understand this Vastu Purusha planning as we try to understand the plan of Kailasa temple. Hindu Temples take their cue from the structure of a Human body. The vast Hindu literature, the Agamic texts of Devalaya-Vastu (Temple Architecture) and sacred geography, describe the temple as a cosmic man, the ‘Purusha’ (cosmic man), and the concept of Vastu Purusha Mandala.
The knowledge that Earth is a living organism, throbbing with life and energy is fundamental to the Vastu Shastra. That living energy is manifested and symbolized as a person, Vastu Purusha. The actual site for the construction is his field – Vastu Purusha Mandala. The Vastu Purusha Mandala, the site plan, is his body and it is treated as such. A Shiva-lingam (lingam means chinnah, sign, logo or representation) represents the elliptical form of cosmos at the time of creation and at the time of dissolution into "Shi va" (Meaning That which is, yet it's not!). Early Shiva temples were not meant for bhakti or worship of Shiva but were considered centers for meditation, alligning Self with the cosmic energy field and practicing Yog (Union). Temples were places to uncover one’s spiritual potential and seek enlightenment in a scientifically designed and structured environment or sacred space. There are seven energy centers in our body, wherein subtle life-force/energy/shakti moves in a circular and throbbing motion, like a spinning wheel. Yogi's know that there are further 114 chakras in the body. But, seven centers can be commonly realised without proper initiation. The chakras or energy centers are considered triangular and the energy in these centers moves in a pulsating rotation, hence they are known as ‘chakras’. The activated energy of ‘kundalini’ in a Yogi, moves upward from the base of the spine, penetrates each chakra one after the other and activates them. They are named in an ascending order, viz.,
Muladhara (Root, The Base of the Spine-Colour Red)
Svadishthana (Sacral, Below the navel-Colour Orange)
Manipura (Solar Plexus, Stomach/Core area-Colour Yellow)
Anahata (Center of the Chest- Colour Green)
Vishuddha (Base of the throat-Colour Blue)
Ajna (Forehead-Colour Indigo)
Sahasrara (Crown/Top of the Head-Colour Violet)
Kailasa Ellora is one such Yog Temple Complex, with each structure coinciding with the Vastu Purusha (Cosmic Man).
~ The Entrance Gopuram is the feet of the Vastu Purusha.
~ The Dhwaja Stambha or Flag Post represents the Muladhara (Root)
~ The Bali-Peetam structure represents the Svadishthana (Sacral)
~ The Nandi Mandapa represents the Manipura (Solar Plexus)
~ The Maha-Mandapa represents the Anahata (Chest/Heart)
~ The Ardha-Mandapa between the Garbha and the Maha-Mandapa represents the Visuddha (Throat)
~ The Garbha Griha (Sanctum Sanctorum) with the Lingam represents Ajna (Head)
~ The intricately carved Lotus Blossom on the ceiling above the Lingam represents the Sahasrara (Crown)
Th Shikhara (Pyramidal Structure) above the Garbha Griha Sanctum is remarkable because it has EIGHT faces which represent the eight cardinal directions of a compass. This eight-sided depiction of cardinal directions can be seen in other ancient structures like the Giza Pyramids of Egypt.
IMPORTANT:-
Image Credits:-
Kevin Standage Photography
www.kevinstandagephotography.wordpress.com
Ellora Caves
https://kevinstandagephotography.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/ellora-caves/
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