Kailasa Temple, Ellora

Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa Temple, is among the most audacious feats of architectural sculpture anywhere in the world: an entire multi-storey Dravida-influenced temple, complete with gateway, courtyard, subsidiary shrines and a soaring shikhara, was excavated top-down out of a single volcanic basalt hillside under Rashtrakuta patronage in the 8th century, rather than constructed from cut and assembled stone. Estimates put the excavated rock volume at roughly 200,000 tonnes, executed without the possibility of correcting a structural mistake once cut. Its relief carving, particularly the panel of the demon-king Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa while Shiva calmly presses it down with a toe, is treated as a highpoint of narrative dynamism in Indian sculpture. Part of the Ellora Caves complex of 34 Hindu, Buddhist and Jain rock-cut monuments inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1983, Kailasa remains the site's central and most visited excavation.