of pilgrimage), especially for Saiva pilgrims, because here a lofty scarp of rock, curved like Siva's moon-crest, faces the setting sun. In the rainy season a torrent flows at its foot and a great cascade pours over in front, so that the pilgrims can pass along a ledge behind it and bathe in the falling spray, believing that it is Gangā's holy stream falling over the great God's brow. For over a mile in length this scarp of rock is carved into monasteries and temples belonging to different sects, among the earliest being the Buddhist Visvakarma stūpa-house already described (Pl. XII, b).
The Kailāsa temple was commenced by Krishna I, of the Rāshtrakūta dynasty, about a.d. 760 to glorify his Ishta-devata, or patron deity, who had helped him to victory and given him supreme sovereignty over the Dekkan. How long it took to complete this stupendous sculpture history does not record; the main part of it probably occupied most of the two and a half centuries the dynasty lasted, and some of the accessories were added later. Krishna's capital was at Bādāmi so the choice of the Pattadakal temple as a model was a natural one. Technically the Kailāsa temple is almost unique among the great rock-cut monuments of India, for instead of making a horizontal excavation into a hill-side, as was the case at Ajantā, or carving detached masses of rock as at Māmallapuram, Krishna's master-masons cut down into the sloping hill-side from above, quarrying a pit varying in depth from 160 feet to about 50 feet, and leaving in the middle of it a detached mass of rock from which they sculptured a full-sized double-storied temple—solid at the base, but with the first floor completed internally and externally—its vimāna, or shrine, 96 feet in height, and the assembly-hall about 53 feet square, with sixteen sculptured pillars arranged in groups of four to support
