Ellora Caves
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How it came to be
The Ellora caves are cut into the basalt cliffs of the Charanandri Hills, about 29 km northwest of Aurangabad in Maharashtra. There are more than 100 caves; the 34 open to the public comprise 12 Buddhist, 17 Hindu and 5 Jain caves, with artwork from about AD 600 to 1000. The site lay on an ancient trade route, and royalty, traders and wealthy locals paid for the work.
Cave 10, a Buddhist prayer hall from around 650, has rock finished to look like wooden beams and is known as the Carpenter's Cave. The Kailasa temple, Cave 16, is attributed to the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (r. 756–773); its makers removed about 200,000 t of rock to carve an entire temple from a single mass of stone.
The last Jain caves were made under the Yadava dynasty, and a late-13th-century Marathi text is the first to report that active use of the caves had ceased. The Archaeological Survey of India manages the site, which UNESCO listed in 1983.
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