The Kailasa temple at Ellora

It is not a building. It is a single piece of basalt hillside with a temple cut out of it, and the carvers worked from the top down, starting at the summit and excavating their way to the floor, which means there was no scaffolding, no assembly, and no way to correct a serious mistake. What is left standing is 32.6 metres tall above a courtyard 82 by 46 metres at the base, with a shrine, a Nandi pavilion, elephants and full-height reliefs, all of it originally attached to the mountain. Most of it is credited to the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, who reigned 756 to 773. M. K. Dhavalikar worked out from a rate of four cubic feet of rock removed per person per day that 250 labourers could have done it in about five and a half years. It is generally called the high point of the entire rock-cut tradition in India. Cave 16 at Ellora, Maharashtra.