Kailasa temple

sToRmR1dR

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
This temple was not constructed by adding stone block,but an entire mountain was carved to create this temple.This is the only example in the whole world where a mountain was cut out from the top,to create structure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Jl4HNDixc

Data from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailasa_temple,_Ellora
 
That place always fascinated me, I hope one day I will be able to go and visit this amazing peace of human creative potential .... thank you for reminder! :thup:
 
Absolutely fantastic! I never knew this place existed...one of those things that make you wonder how the heck did they do that! Thanks sToRmR1dR
 
The whole edifice is remarkable.
Yet I don't think that it is the only one of its kind.
The Egyptian Sphynx is another example, as is the temple in Ethiopia which supposedly houses the Ark of the Covenant.
Beautiful workmanship.
 
Absolutely fascinating and breathtaking place! I'm surprised that I never heard of it before... I discovered it two days ago, through a portion in this video (from 09:46 - 18:22):


https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4rt5xu

That temple is part of the huge Ellora Caves system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves

The temple is supposed to have been build in 756-773 AD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailasa_temple,_Ellora

wikipedia said:
A megalith carved out of one single rock

Judging by the amount of rock being used (or rather removed from it, since it is completely carved out of one solid rock formation), it was certainly a huge undertaking, if we are to believe that it was really carved out with normal tools of that time frame. Judging from the amount of material that was needed to create/remove it, it must be the biggest megalithic structure I've seen as of yet.

The german wikipedia page says that 150.000 - 200.000 tons (according to other data even 400.000 tons) of rock had to be removed there in order to carve it out:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailasa-Tempel

I noticed that neither article from wikipedia (not the english nor the german one) has a couple of the really interesting datas mentioned.

Like the stone material out of which it was carved. It took me quite a enormous amount of time to find it mentioned somewhere:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailasanathar_Temple

Kailasa temple, Ellora, Rastrakuta-Pallava rock cut black granite megalithic Shiva temple of the Ellora Caves, near Aurangabad in Maharashtra

So they say there that it is black granite. It certainly looks like a very hard stone. To find what type of stone it is proved quite hard. No article I could find about the temple mentions the type of stone out of which it was cut. I don't quite understand this. That mentioning above is the only one I could find about what type of stone it is.

All the black granite's that I could find from india, have the hardness of 6.5 in the Moh's Scale:

http://www.indian-granit.com/buy_granites_india.html

So the stone from the temple has most likely that hardness. It is one of the hardest stones in nature. Here is the Moh Scale:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness

A very hard stone that is even harder to process let alone "for primiitive people".

It doesn't stop there though. under the structure is supposedly a vast tunnel system, carved into that rock and I'm assuming it is connected to the rest of the Ellora Cave system, motioned above.

Absolutely fascinanting to think about how, who, when and for what purpose this original structure was created. Somehow normal archaeological explanations for the creation of that temple seem simply impossible, to say the least.

Interestingly the name Kailasa sounds very similar to the holy Mount Kaliash in the Himalaya in Tibet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kailash

Mount Kailash said:
It is considered a sacred place in four religions: Bön, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

A couple of cool pictures and descriptions can be found here:

http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2016/02/temple-carved-from-a-single-rock.html
http://www.kamit.jp/02_unesco/03_kailasa/kai_eng.htm
 
This temple is estimated to have been built between 757 and 783 BCE and built with a view to resemble Mount Kailash, where Shiva is believed to reside as per Hinduism. An estimated 400,000 tons of rocks were scooped out over a really long period of 20 years to construct this monolithic structure.

from http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2016/02/temple-carved-from-a-single-rock.html

What I didn't understand is the reason why the 18 to 20 years interval is insisted upon as the time interval when the temple was built?
Radiocarbon or anecdotal evidence?
 
It is an incredible structure, maybe sound technology? Beautiful indeed
I didn't understand why the came up with that time stimate to make the temple (18 years)
They deffinetly had a different method to build it.

Side note: there is only so much history channel i can take a day :P :P. Their format is so overdramatic.
 
Thanks for sharing sToRmR1dR! It's amazing!! It reminded me a little bit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, every time I see pics of Angkor it gives me the chills, like if it's from another reality or something.


https://youtu.be/rnK3Swwv08k
 

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Thank You for sharing another wonder of the ancient world. I stopped dealing with dates because many times they are inaccurate unless there are eyewitnesses to the event recorded. As a former archeology student, I was trained in a certain discipline where out of place artifacts that could not be dated or explained were either ignored or falsified. So in my own mind I no longer deal with dates.

For instance my first intrigue as a child was the Sphinx as well as the pyramids at Giza. Even though people kept saying that they were 5,000 years old, I never "believed" those dates. I always "felt" they were much much older. Then came along ideas, theories & the C's which gave us different info than the standard. The erosion along the Sphinx & its complex as well as knowing the region wasn't always a desert made me think differently about the entire area as well the planet itself.

As a small child I asked my Mother how old the world was & she told me about 6,000 years old. I then asked her where did the dinosaurs fit in in that time frame. She never answered but instead bought me books on dinosaurs and Egypt. I guess since she didn't have an answer she gave me the books so I could figure out the answer for myself. It was then that I became a torn in my family's side as well as the churches. All these unanswerable questions. Pissed off the ministers but good because they had no answers either. :rotfl:

I enjoy seeing these types of structures because they defy the ordinary. Thank You again for sharing.
 
It surely is fascinating! They probably used the same kind of carving technology as in Petra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra
 
Persej said:
It surely is fascinating! They probably used the same kind of carving technology as in Petra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra

Petra, indeed! Thank you for mentioning it, Persej, as I wanted to do it myself as another example of such an amazing craftsmanship. Clearly in the the past there were technologies available that were much more effective than a simple hammer and a lot of free time on their hands.
 
Keit said:
Clearly in the the past there were technologies available that were much more effective than a simple hammer and a lot of free time on their hands.

Yeah. It would have saved my grandpa and my grand-grandpa a lot of time and energy when they built their house. :)
 
Judging by the amount of rock being used (or rather removed from it, since it is completely carved out of one solid rock formation), it was certainly a huge undertaking, if we are to believe that it was really carved out with normal tools of that time frame. Judging from the amount of material that was needed to create/remove it, it must be the biggest megalithic structure I've seen as of yet.

Had caught this guy, PreveenMohan, who does a run down on the rock carved out and how it could be accomplished - very odd, very skilled.

 
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