Ellora: A Wonder of the World
Two Millenia of Indian Heritage
The town of Ellora, in the state of Maharashtra, is one of the most significant religious sites in all of Indian history.
Ellora is mostly known for the collosal Kailashanath temple, which remains the largest rock-cut monolith in the world. This extraordinary temple is many times larger and more impressive than Jordan's Petra, but remains far less well known outside of India.
Ellora is much more than the one temple, though. It contains sites sacred not only to Hinduism but Jainism, Buddhism and Islam. Virtually every period of Indian history is represented in the town, from ancient Satavahana monasteries to medeival Rashtrakuta masterpieces; from Sultanate sufi shrines to Mughal tombs and Maratha temples.
Its been a cosmopolitan place for millenia, sought over by Marathi, Persians, Kannadigas, Uzbeks and even Ethiopian rulers. So sacred was this town for people across the world that a tomb was built here for the last Ottoman Sultan.
Unfortunately Ellora's incredible global history has today been partitioned into several separate ones.
Under the British Raj, Ellora's 13th century suburb of Khuldabad, began to be seen as anathema to the Hindu nature of the town, despite having been the most sacred Muslim site in South India for half a milleniam
The Republic of India has since followed suit, promoting tourism to the pre-Islamic Ellora Caves, but largely ignoring role as a major capital of the Indian Sultanates, the Mughals and the Marathas.
My aim in this article I aim to show how the view is when we consider Ellora and Khuldabad as a single sacred city, and not just as a stream of separate monuments.
In some sense, the breadth of Indian history can be glimpsed here in a single town
The Early Caves
Millions of years ago, the Deccan traps around modern Ellora were a steaming flow of endless lava. Eventually they froze into cliffs of black basault and by the early centuries BC, a nature Goddess called Aparna was worshipped in the region.
Around the same time, the extraordinary caves around Ajanta began to be excavated and adorned with some of the greatest surviving paintings from the ancient world.
Buddhists, Brahmins and Jains were gradually drawn to the sacred tirtha over the subsequent centuries, but the Ellora that we see today is largely thanks to a single man: king Krishna of the Rashtrakuta Empire.
Even within India few people remember the Rashtrakutas, partly because their great capital Manyaketa was razed to the ground by the Cholas in the 11th century.
But the Rashtrakutas were THE great empire of the medeival Deccan. Indeed back in the day, Arab merchants mentioned this vast and vibrant Empire in the same breath as the Abbasid Caliphate, Tang China and Byzantium.
The Kailashanatha Temple that King Krishna commisioned at Ellora remains one of the most ambitious architectural feats in history.
Sculpted from a single massive basalt cliff, its artisans had to remove nearly two million cubic feet of rock to create a monolithic structure the size of a football field.
It was built to resemble Mount Kailash, the mythical abode of Shiva, and its design reflected breathtaking ingenuity, with intricate carvings of celestial beings, cascading tiers, and grand halls. It remains one of the largest freestanding rock excavations in the world, unmatched in scale and beauty.
Arrival of the Sufis
After the demise of the Rashtrakutas, Ellora disappears from the historical archive for a few hundred years.
The Rashtrakuta's successors, the Western Chalukyas and the Yadavas, were certainly aware of the site, but their attention seemed focused on transforming the nearby mountain of Devagiri into an enormous Shiv-lingam-shaped fortress, rather than expanding the complex at Ellora.
Construction at Ellora would only resume after Alauddin Khilji annexed the area to the Delhi sultanate in the late 13th century.
Khilji’s troops desecrated the nearby Yadava temple at Devagiri, repurposing the ruins into a mosque. Yet they didn't touch even a single murti at Ellora, which was instead transformed into an unlikely sightseeing spot for bored soldiers stationed in Devagiri.
Grafually, Sufi orders set up shop around the Ellora caves, and the area soon became known as ‘Rauza’.
Indeed the region’s already sacred landscape was now further sanctified by a series of Chishti sufi shrines.
The first of these was Sayyed Muntajib - also known as Zar Zari Zar Bakhsh - who was buried here in the mid 13th century who was followed soon after by saints Burhanuddin Gharib and Zainuddin Shirazi.
The Deccan Sultans
By the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Deccan was ruled by a series of jostling sultanates, Ellora had become known as the most sacred Muslim pilgrimage site in the Deccan.
Indeed although animosity was common between the various Deccani sultans, they all perceived Ellora as a sacred centre.
In his Tadhkirat al Muluk, the Bijapuri historian Rafi al-Din Shirazi writes of the Kailashanatha Temple as a "wonder and a rarity" of the ancient world comparable with the ruins of Persepolis and Naqsh-i-Rustam. Indeed he laments that "this kind of idol temple and art we have forgotten" and calls on God to forgive his patron for destroying similar temples in Vijayanagara.
The Early Marathas
After a small interregnum, Hindu elites within these sultanates would eventually restore Ellora to Hindu worship.
The tomb of one such Hindu general in the Ahmednagar Sultanate - Maloji Bhonsle - stands just a short distance from the Kailashanatha Temple.
Maloji's grandson, Shivaji Bhonsle, would later help bring down the Mughal Empire. Yet despite his family’s fame in the state, Majoji’s tomb stands largely unprotected and unnoticed by a bus intersection, surrounded by litter.
Maloji was a close aide to Malik Ambar, the Ethiopian-slave-turned-ruler of Ahmednagar who definitely deserves his own substack article at some point.
Malik Ambar eventually granted Maloji the pargana of Verul (modern Ellora), and in 1595, the Ahmednagar Sultan granted him the title of Raja.
On Malik Ambar's reccomendation, he was later given the jagirdar of Pune, thus setting the stage for the rise of the Marathas in years to come.
The Arrival of the Mughals
In the late 16th century, Ellora was integrated into the Mughal Empire. Three generations later, the town was surrounded by high walls punctuated by seven gates, and adorned with gardens and new hydraulic systems.
Google Ellora today and you'll find all sorts of tall tales - all based off of colonial British oral histories in the 19th century- that the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb spent ten years trying to destroy Ellora's Kailashanatha temple.
In fact, the truth is stranger than fiction. Although Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of a great many temples - Janmabhoomi in Mathura, Visheshwar in Varanasi and even the Jagganath Temple in Puri - there is no record of him ever trying to destroy the temple at Ellora.
By constrast, Aurangzeb's own memoirs show that he grew particularly fond of the town, regarding it as the spiritual heart of the Deccan thanks to its profusion in Sufi shrines.
Indeed despite usually being known for his destruction of temples, Aurangzeb soon began frequenting Ellora’s Kailashanatha temple. He felt it was "a marvellous place for strolling" despite having once been "a place of worship” for “unbelievers.”
The Kailashanatha Temple is "one of the wonders of the work of the transcendent Artisan [Allah]," Aurangzeb writes; "charming to the eye" and "unless one sees it, no written description can correctly picture it."
Remarkably, he eventually chose to be buried half an hours walk from the temple. Ellora was subsequently renamed 'Khuldabad' in his honour.
Given that Aurangzeb never compliments any other temples in his memoir, it's safe to say that this one was his favourite .
The Nizams and the Last Caliph of Islam
In early 18th century, the Mughal Empire's weakening led to the governor of the Deccan, Nizam-ul-Mulk, to establish an independent Nizamate of Hyderabad.
The dynasty's early rulers were buried at Ellora - now known as Khuldabad and the state they established would subsequently become the premium state in the British Raj.
In 1931, the Nizam of Hyderabad married his sons to the daughters of the deposed Ottoman caliph Abdulmecid II. Then, a week later, he purportedly secured a deed from the last Caliph, nominating their joint grandchildren as the next Caliphs of Islam.
To signify the revival of the caliphate in Hyderabad, he then began constructing a grand Ottoman tomb for Abdulmecid II at Ellora.
Just as the Nizam and Caliph hoped, Hyderabad soon came to be regarded as “the most prominent Muslim city outside of the Holy Land,” and uttered in the same breath as Mecca and Jerusalem.
But the Caliph would never be buried here. War would soon sweep across Europe, and by 1948 Hyderabad state had itself been extinguished.
The tomb built for the Caliph was all but forgotten, and now lies abandoned on a hill, the last great monument ever built at Ellora.
Sources
Ernst, C., “Admiring the Works of the Ancients: The Ellora Temples as viewed by Indo-Muslim Authors”
Sohoni, P., “Aurangabad, with Daulatabad, Khuldabad and Ahmadnagar”
Sohoni, P., “Imbrication and Implication: Early Ma ra tha Architecture and the Deccan Sultanates”
Sohoni, P., “Continuities in the Sacred Landscape: Ellora, Khuldabad and the Temple of Grishneshwara. A Single Social Historical Complex”
Kanisetti, A., “Lords of the Deccan”
Pillai, M., “Rebel Sultans”
Absolutely stunning! I really enjoyed learning that Aurangzeb admired the beauty of Ellora. While every aspect of the Kailashanatha temple is captivating, the artwork that fascinates me the most is the depiction of Ravana attempting to lift Shiva and Parvati’s seat on Mount Kailash. There’s an undeniable mystique to that scene!
Having just recently visited these magnificent sites this article sheds so much more light on them and indeed even increased my fascination with the place! Cannot wait to go back and explore more! Thank you for this :)