Close-up of 1,200-year-old ancient temple carved from a giant block of stone
Monday, April 1, 2024 21:00 PM (GMT+7)
The Kailasa Temple in Maharashtra, India is the world's largest monolithic structure carved entirely by hand from a single block of stone. It is considered one of the most amazing works in the history of architecture.
Kailasa Temple in Maharashtra, India, is considered one of the pinnacles of rock-cut architecture in India.
Kailasa Temple is carved from a rock face, 32.6 m above the ground below. Although the rock face slopes downward from the back of the temple to the front, archaeologists believe it was carved from a single block of rock.
According to experts, the temple is made of megalithic stone. The main architectural style is Dravidian. The Kailasa Temple has a square pyramid shape with meticulously carved details, about 3 floors high.
Kailasa Temple is amazing because the entire structure was created by vertical excavation, meaning the workers had to dig and chisel the stone blocks from top to bottom.
According to archaeologists, to complete this project, the ancients needed to carve and transport 400,000 tons of earth and stone. If this temple was built manually, it would take workers up to 20 years to complete the work.
The temple consists of a horseshoe-shaped courtyard and a Gopuram at the entrance. On either side of the main temple complex are 30-meter-high columns with carvings of numerous deities.
Not only of architectural value, Kailasa Temple is also home to thousands of sculptures, drawings and inscriptions that demonstrate the artistic and philosophical richness of ancient Indian civilization.
Among them is a stone slab engraved with the contents of the epic Ramayana. It is estimated that today there are still about 32 million Sanskrit carvings here that have not been translated.
There are many elephant statues in the premises of this place of worship. From above, Kailasa looks like he is being protected by a herd of elephants.
Images of various gods and figures, all believed to be devotees of Shiva.
To this day, they still cannot explain how the ancients were able to separate the giant rocks from a mountain of more than 30 m high in such perfect proportions. Therefore, many rumors say that Kailasa Temple is a construction built by aliens.
Thanh Nha (According to ANTĐ)
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