Cutting the Kailasa temple at Ellora meant removing roughly two hundred thousand tonnes of rock from the top down, leaving no seam to show where construction started.
Carved, not built
Unlike a structure assembled from blocks, the Kailasa Temple, cave 16 at Ellora, was excavated directly from a single basalt hillside, sculptors working downward and inward from the top of the rock face rather than building upward, so the entire temple, including its freestanding shrine, connecting bridges and surrounding cloister of smaller shrines, is a single unbroken piece of stone. Estimates of the labour involved vary widely, and scholars are not agreed on whether it was completed within one king's reign or extended across several generations of patronage under the Rashtrakuta dynasty in the eighth century.
More than one faith carving the same cliff
Ellora's roughly three dozen caves include Buddhist viharas and a rock-cut chaitya hall with its own carved stupa, Hindu temples culminating in the Kailasa complex, and Jain shrines added later, cut into the same escarpment across some four centuries without one tradition displacing the physical space of another.
Conservation under pressure
Water infiltration, seasonal monsoon runoff and heavy visitor traffic have caused ongoing erosion and staining of carved surfaces, prompting drainage and access management measures by Indian heritage authorities aimed at slowing damage to carvings that, being solid rock rather than assembled masonry, cannot be dismantled and rebuilt if seriously compromised.