186. Kylas at Ellora. (Corrected from a Plan in Daniell’s ‘Views in Hindostan.’) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
Independently, however, of its historical or ethnographical value, the Kylas is in itself one of the most singular and interesting monuments of architectural art in India. Its beauty and singularity always excited the astonishment of travellers, and in consequence it is better known than almost any other structure in that country, from the numerous views and sketches of it that have been published. Unlike the Buddhist excavations we have hitherto been describing, it is not a mere interior chamber cut in the rock, but is a model of a complete temple, such as might have been erected on the plain. In other words, the rock has been cut away, externally as well as internally. The older caves are of a much more natural and rational design than this temple, because, in cutting away the rock around it to provide an exterior, the whole has necessarily been
187. Kylas, Ellora. (From a Sketch by the Author.)
placed in a pit. In the cognate temples at Mahavellipore ([Woodcut No. 181]) this difficulty has been escaped by the fact that the boulders of granite out of which they are hewn were found lying free on the shore; but at Ellora, no insulated rock being available, a pit was dug around the temple in the sloping side of the hill, about 100 ft. deep at its inmost side, and half that height at the entrance or gopura, the floor of the pit being 150 ft. wide and 270 ft. in length. In the centre of this rectangular court stands the temple, as shown in the preceding plan ([Woodcut No. 186]), consisting of a vimana, between 80 ft. and 90 ft. in height, preceded by a large square porch, supported by sixteen columns (owing probably to the immense weight to be borne); before this stands a detached porch, reached by a bridge; and in front of all stands the gateway, which is in like manner connected with the last porch by a bridge, the whole being cut out of the native rock. Besides these there are two pillars or deepdans (literally lamp-posts) left standing on each side of the detached porch, and two elephants about the size of life. All round the court there is a peristylar cloister with cells, and some halls not shown in the plan, which give to the whole a complexity, and at the same time a completeness, which never fail to strike the beholder with astonishment and awe.
As will be seen from the view ([Woodcut No. 187]) the outline of the vimana is at first sight very similar to that of the raths at Mahavellipore, but on closer inspection we find everything so modified at Ellora as to make up a perfect and well understood design. The vimana with its cells, and the porch in front of it with its side cells, make a complete Hindu temple such as are found in hundreds in southern India, and instead of the simulated cells that surround the hall in the Madras example, they again become realities, but used for widely different purposes. Instead of being the simulated residences of priests, the five or rather seven cells that surround the central object here are each devoted to a separate divinity of the Hindu Pantheon, and group most pleasingly with the central vimana. It is, however, so far as is now known, the last reminiscence of this Buddhist arrangement in Hindu architecture; after the year 1000 even these cells disappear or become independent erections, wholly separated from the temple itself.
Though considerably damaged by Moslem violence, the lower part of the gopura shows a considerable advance on anything found at Mahavellipore, and a close approach to what these objects afterwards became, in so far, at least, as the perpendicular parts are concerned; instead, however, of the tall pyramids which were so universal afterwards, the gopura in the Kylas exhibits only what may be called the germ of such an arrangement. It is only the upper member of a gopura placed in the flat roof of the gateway, and so small as not to be visible except from above. In more modern times from five to ten storeys would have been interposed to connect these two parts. Nothing of the kind however exists here.[369]