Ellora Jain caves

The caves

Five principal excavations make up the group. Indra Sabha, cave 32, is the largest and most complete: a two-storeyed court with a free-standing monolithic shrine, elaborately carved pillars, and images of the tirthankaras with attendant figures. Jagannatha Sabha, cave 33, is comparable at smaller scale. Chhota Kailasa, cave 30, is an unfinished attempt at a monolithic temple echoing the great Hindu Kailasa nearby.

The carving includes large panels of Bahubali with creepers about his limbs, and of Parshvanatha under the serpent hood, the two figures whose iconography most readily identifies a Jain excavation.

Position at Ellora

Ellora's caves run in sequence along a basalt escarpment: Buddhist at the south, Hindu in the centre, Jain at the north. The Jain group is the latest, cut under Rashtrakuta patronage in the ninth and tenth centuries, when the dynasty's support extended to all three traditions.

Their smaller scale relative to the Hindu Kailasa reflects both the size of the community and the point in the site's history at which they were undertaken. Traces of painted plaster survive on some ceilings, indicating that the interiors were originally coloured.

Significance

Ellora is the clearest physical demonstration of three traditions building at one site over some five centuries, under successive dynasties, without displacing one another. For Jain art it preserves a rock-cut phase in the Deccan that survives nowhere else at this quality.