A MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERWORK

I am an architect by training and experience. Soon after arriving in India in August 1968, to begin a three-year assignment as design consultant for the new campus of IIT-K (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur), I visited the World Heritage cave temple site of Ellora. Its principal monument is the eighth-century Hindu temple called Kailasa, or, simply, the Kailas. It is not a cave in the usual sense, however: instead of being carved laterally into the face of a cliff, it was carved downward from the top of one. Or more specifically, a huge temple of primeval stone was left standing free, complete in every detail, in the middle of an excavation the size of a football field [figure 1].

Moving through the Kailas that first time, as a new view of its magnificent stone carving unfolded at every step, splayed against an omnipresent background of towering raw cliffs, was the most exhilarating and powerful architectural expression of space I had ever experienced. It remains so today.

Thirty-seven years were to pass before I saw the Kailas again. Its spatial impact was just as I remembered it. But this time, with the knowledge and understanding of Hinduism that I had gained over those intervening years, superficial as it remains, I had come to realize that its spatial qualities are only a fraction of what this temple has to offer—to a visitor open enough in spirit truly to see and feel it. To experience the Kailas fully, one must open one’s senses to see its forms, to feel its space, and to comprehend the profound conceptions that lie beneath their surface, hidden in metaphor.

Kailasa is a real mountain that rises dramatically from the Tibetan plain, beyond the high Himalayas. Isolated, strikingly formed, perpetually snow-capped, it was a major landmark on the fabled Silk Road, the caravan route that from before the birth of Christ linked Xian in China with ancient Tyre and Antioch on the Mediterranean Sea. Mount Kailasa is sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains, and devotees of all three faiths still come from afar to tread the pilgrims’ path that encircles its base, just as they have done for centuries. But

1. The Kailas panorama, looking west from atop east cliff

it is especially revered by Hindus, as the celestial abode of their great Lord Shiva.

The Kailas at Ellora, dedicated to Shiva, is a symbolic model in miniature of the real mountain, and so a microcosm of the world of the gods. Each of its many sculptures is a visual metaphor, portraying an image or tale from Hinduism’s vast mythology, revealing a fundamental truth about the worlds of man and of the gods. Among these sculptural treasures is a monumental panel in high relief, located at the very base of the temple/mountain, which portrays the famous legend of Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa [see figure 39]. This evil demon was once imprisoned in the real mountain, beneath

the cave of Shiva and his consort Parvati. The demon, his ten heads alive with passion, flails his arms wildly as he attempts to topple the mountain. Above him Parvati clutches Shiva’s arm for protection, her maid flees in terror, and their attendants are struck motionless in fright. Only Shiva is unperturbed, as with the slightest pressure of his toe he reduces the demon’s mighty effort to naught. God, we are instructed, is all-powerful. He protects his devotees from evil. The greatest disruptions in temporal life are as nothing in the ultimate scheme of things.

It is well understood by most scholars and informed lay visitors, I believe, that this sculpture, and many others within the temple, are deliberately intended to convey metaphoric messages such as this. What is not understood, however, is that the same is true of many of the temple’s architectural features, and of the ever-present raw cliff faces of the vast excavation within which the principal monument— the vimana—stands.

The physical forms of the temple—its individual sculptures and carved architectural details—have all been extensively documented, and the history of its creation extensively debated, by many eminent scholars, beginning with the British archaeologists James Fergusson and James Burgess in the 1870s and continuing to the present day. Concepts of space and metaphor, however, are all but totally absent from their writings. These absences have led directly, I believe, to dozens of major misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions regarding the monument itself and the intentions of its designer. I propose in this study to correct these misunderstandings and rebut these errors, one by one, in the course of a walking tour through the entire temple. Focusing not merely on its stones but on the meanings that lie beneath them as well, this tour will follow a route trod by thousands of devotees performing the sacred pradakshina (ritual circumambulation) over many centuries. By doing so, as the title suggests, I hope to shed an entirely new light on what is truly a misunderstood masterwork of world architecture.