Ellora

a decayed town in the dominions of the Nizam, not far from the city of Dowlatabad, in lat. 200 2 degrees N., and long. 750 13 degrees E., which are in this respect the most noted even in India. It is celebrated for its wonderful rock-cut temples. Their number has not been precisely ascertained, but Erskine reckoned 19 large ones, partly of Hindu and partly of Buddhist origin. Some are cave-temples proper — i.e., chambers cult out in the interior of the rock — but others are vast buildings hewn out of the solid granite of the hills, having an exterior as well as an interior architecture, and being, in fact, magnificent monoliths. In executing the latter, the process was first to sink a great quadrangular trench or pit, leaving the central mass standing, and then to hew and excavate this mass into a temple. The most beautiful of these objects is the Hindu temple Kailasa. At its entrance the traveler passes into an antechamber 138 feet wide by 88 deep, adorned by numerous rows of pillars. Thence he proceeds along a colonnade over a bridge into a great rectangular court, which is 247 feet in length and 150 broad, in the center of which stands the temple itself, a vast mass of rock richly hewn and carved. It is supported by four rows of pilasters, with colossal elephants beneath, and seems suspended in the air. The interior is about 103 feet long, 56 broad, and 17 feet high, but the entire exterior forms a pyramid 100 feet high, and is overlaid with sculpture. In the great court are numerous ponds, obelisks, colonnades, sphinxes, and on the walls thousands of mythological figures of all kinds, from ten to twelve feet in height. Of the other temples, those of Indra and Dumarheyna are little inferior to that of Kailasa. Regarding their antiquity and religious significance, authorities are not agreed; but at all events they must be subsequent to the epic poems Ramoyama or Mahabharata, because they contain representations taken from these poems, and also to the cave-temples at Elephanta, because they exhibit a richer and more advanced style of architecture.