One of India's most beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites is Ellora, Read More...
Deepika Joshi
In total, Ellora has 34 temples and monasteries. The Charanandri hills are where these temples are located.
Over 2 km of space is occupied by the Ellora Cave Temple. One of the most complex and distinctive temple designs in the world, these temples are carved side by side in a continuous line.
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism are all practised in the Ellora Caves. Their coexistence in the same compound demonstrates the level of tolerance that prevailed in ancient India.
Ellora's rock-cut cave temples date from between the fifth and the twelfth centuries.
All of the caves have numbers, with Caves 1 and 12 being the oldest at dating from the fifth century. These caves are Buddhist in nature and contain remnants of the Mahayana school of Buddhism.
Jain cave temples can be found in caves 30 through 34. They were discovered somewhere between the ninth and the twelfth centuries.