As a wise person once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” When we rummage through the pages of history, we gradually start understanding what he meant by that. World history is full of wars, people, kingdoms, queens, bravery, spirituality, love, and death. However, while books are a really good source of knowing history, historical monuments are history themselves. In every creak and corner, in every dust and dirt, a piece of history lies. And if you listen carefully, you will hear stories, coming to form the walls, of the times they have witnessed.
Today, I will try to take you through a journey of history, mystery, and spirituality. Today, I am going to discuss the Kailasha Temple, which is situated in Maharashtra, India. The temple is in the Aurangabad district of the Maharashtra state of India. It is the 16th cave of the whole Ellora cave structure. For people, who have not heard about the Ellora caves, it is one of the most fascinating cave structures, found in the world, with hand-sculpted structures of deities and ancient Indian history. So, what makes Kailasha Temple stand out from the rest of the caves and the temples?
The temple was built by the Rashtrakuta King, Krishna the first in between 765 AD to 773 AD. This means the temple was built around 1200 years ago. It is a fine example of a monolithic structure. Monolithic structures are carved from one rock body rather than using various rocks and assembling them to make a structure, which is called a polylithic structure. The Kailasha temple is the world’s largest monolithic structure. The most interesting part of the temple is that it is carved vertically from the top-down, unlike other monolithic structures of the world that are curved upwards. Unlike other monolithic structures, which are done by a process called cut in monolithic, this temple was developed in a process called cut out monolithic. It is carved in the tough basalt rock formation of the Sahyadri mountains. 400,000 tons of rocks were removed to make this temple.
The structure of the temple perfectly resembles the sacred mount Kailash which is known to be the resting place of Lord Shiva. There are a lot of stories regarding the building of the Kailasha Temple. Among them, one is about the queen, who promised to fast, until the completion of the temple. The story goes on like this, Raja Krishna I was very ill once and his queen prayed to Lord Shiva, in order to save his life. She made an oath that if her husband gets well, she will build the temple in the name of Lord Shiva and will starve until the completion of the top shrine of the temple. In few days the King return to his good health. That is when the main architect of the temple Kokasa became overly concerned about the Queen’s health because the top shrine is the last stage of building a temple and it will take a lot of time, which can result in the starvation of the Queen. So locals say that in order to save the Queen, Kokasa proposes the plan of making the temple top-down and finished it up in one week.
The story is somewhat like dozen other stories that are prevalent in history, but the thing that makes Kailasha Temple stand out of the crowd is not the story behind it, but the architecture of the temple itself. The architectures of the temple consist of very well card bridges, rainwater harvesting system, intricate drainage systems, hidden underground passages, secret peepholes to hide and spy on people standing on balconies or crossing the passages, balconies, and staircases that lead to the multiple levels of the structure. Now, remember the fact that this temple was build very long ago when such advanced mechanisms were very rare to find. In some places of the temple, the architecture proves the fact that the people who planned it, had a highly intelligent mindset and proper mathematical planning strategies. Which seems quite absurd since it was 1200 years ago.
Now let's come to the interesting part, as mentioned above, the temple is a monolithic structure, which means cut from one rock. Experts have measured the amount of time, that will be taken by the advanced machinery to build a temple-like this, and the result was that it will take around 100 years to make it. However, at that time, it took only 18 years. Strategically speaking, with the quality of manual labor at those times, even if I consider that men worked for 18 years straight to remove around 400,000 tonnes of rocks from mountainous terrain, it will still not be enough. So how they did it along with creating intricate designs and complex engineering works? This question is still not answered.
Another more astonishing fact about the temple is that it is not destructible. In the times of a notorious ruler, King Aurangzeb, the temple was ordered to be broken down. However, the king’s men could only harm few statutes and a very minimal portion of the temple, after working hard for three years.
Source: http://www.erwinvoogt.com/
The mystery doesn’t end here, the Kailasha Temple is the only one that could be viewed from the air like it was meant to be viewed from the air, and there are four structures built on the temple roof, that look like an X mark, when viewed from the top, just like a signal. So, was Kailasha Temple built to give a signal to aircraft in 800 AD? (The first aircraft was made in 1907 AD).
Is Kailasha a living proof of extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet or was there a much advanced and intelligent civilization, that disappeared from the pages of history? Probably we will never know the answers to these questions, but if you ever visit the temple, try to put your ear on the cold stones and maybe they will tell you the secret.
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