Never I have been so much influenced by the historical monuments of our country as I am now. After exploring the southern side of Ellora caves, we were intrigued to see what came next.Moving towards the northern side,we came upon cave no 21 also known as
The Rameshwara Temple,excavated in the 7th century A.D.This temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva and has a courtyard and a hall consisting sculptured pillars on both sides.
Like any other shiva temple,we saw a beautiful shiva-lingam inside the hall and many other intricately carved figurines of Lord Shiva . The courtyard had a huge Nandi sculpture placed right in the middle and beautifully carved river goddess adorned the exterior panels of the cave.
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At this point we took the bus provided by the government authorities to reach the Jain temples which was around one km from there.
Jain Temples( Cave 30-34)
The Jain caves were excavated in the ninth and early tenth centuries.These caves belonged to the Digambara sect and were the last ones to be excavated in Ellora. We started off with the finest of the Jain caves,
cave no 32 also known as the
Indra Sabha. It was a double storied cave having the most intricately carved figurines of god Mahavir and goddess Ambika .Just adjacent to this cave was cave no 31 which was not completed.
Another notable cave among the Jain caves was cave no 30 also known as chhota Kailash having similarities with the Kailash temple.It had 22 tirthankaras with Mahavir at the centre .Cave no 33 also known as the Jagannath Sabha dates back to the 9th century.It had massive pillars and was similar in plan to cave no 32.
Thus this brought an end to our remarkable journey and I wonder why Ellora caves is not among the seven wonders of the world.....
