![]() *There are and were many other cave temples but some of these have been incorporated into Jain and Hindu temples which are built on top of or around them and have often been restyled. But it is a fact, known to the Initiated Brahmins of India and especially to Yogis, that there is not a cave-temple in the country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and that those underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn their caves and corridors. ![]() Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajanta have been built on subterranean labyrinths and passages, as claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which are known to every European, whether de visu or through hearsay, notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that is. Blavatsky some of these complexes date to a much more remote period and were ancient mystery schools built on labyrinths of still other caves which have not been discovered. The temples were sculptured by Jains, Hindus, and Buddhists, and standard textbook opinion about their age is that the earliest were carved around 300 BCE but most in the period of the 4th to the 9th centuries CE. Others are located in the northeastern state of Bihar and in Karnataka to the south of Maharastra, with a few scattered throughout other states.* The most famous cave complexes are Ellora, Ajanta, Elephanta, Karli, Bhaja, Bedsa, Nasik, Udayagiri, Bagh, Badami, Cuttack, and Barabar. So far about 1,200 cave temples have been discovered in India, some 1,000 of them located in the western state of Maharastra. It is mind-boggling to realize that all that is seen is the original rock still standing, sculptured with precision and great care on the basis of a grand plan. Entirely cut out of the hills, these cave temples are in fact not buildings but masterpieces of sculpture. Ellora: Concept and Style, Carmel BerksonĪ list of the most magnificent wonders which ancient civilizations have produced, including the Egyptian pyramids, the ancient city and temples at Machu Picchu in Peru, and the ancient temples at Angkor in Cambodia, should not omit the rock-cut cave temples of India, especially the large Kailas complex at Ellora. While each temple is but an infinitesimal section of the great mountain, its symbolic centre, the sanctum - now identified with the one and only centre, the heart of the individual - is perpetually regenerative, if its functions are properly understood. Thus while the mountain itself is merely an infinitesimal slice of an unbounded universe, it has always served as symbol for an absolute, unchanging and ineffable, still Reality.
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