Talk:Ellora Caves

I came across this short passage on the page; "One aspect a typical visitor overlooks is the geological background of Ellora. In fact the most defining factor why Ellora was ever made and that too at this location is the geological peculiarity of the place [14]". There are several problems with this section. It takes text directly from the source material without quoting it. The construction of the second sentence is awkward. Perhaps most importantly, it does not actually contain any information about the geology of Ellora -- it simply claims that visitors to Ellora don't understand its geology, which is unnecessarily condescending and unhelpful. Here is my proposed revision;

Ellora occupies a relatively flat region of the Western Ghats. Ancient volcanic activity in this area created many layered basalt formations, known as Deccan Traps. During the Cretaceous, one such volcanic hill formed on the southwest-facing side of Ellora. Its vertical face made access to many layers of rock formations easier, enabling architects to pick basalt with finer grains for more detailed sculpting. ^[1]

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This article currently uses the word "artwork" 18 times. In each case it would be much better, imo, to replace it, generally with "art" or (here) "sculpture", "image/s", "figure/s" etc., or just omit it - "relief artworks" for example are just "reliefs". The word is very rarely needed in art history, except when dealing with very general areas like copyright, museum regulations and such like. The best art history sources will be found to avoid it. There may be an element of ENGVAR here; the word is sometimes overused in American academic art history, not generally of the best quality (although not on the scale seen here), but not usually in British English ones. As it is rarely actually needed MOS:COMMONALITY applies. Really, it is especially inappropriate here, as to the uncertain reader "artwork" will probably suggest initially and mainly either paintings or the commercial design sense of drawings etc, when actually at Ellora all the "artwork" is either sculpture or sculpted architectural decoration (if one is going to distinguish between the two). Johnbod (talk) 03:20, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to change a few. I have come across the term artwork(s), when the author is trying to generically refer to or include a spectrum of things... relief, statues, friezes, painting, etc. For example, see the various instances in Kleiner^[1] in Gardner's Art through the Ages, pages xi-xii, 1-7, 31-37, etc. Stokstad^[2] is another example. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 03:40, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

But (even if these were the best exemplars, which they are not) that is not how the word is used here. Nor is there any painting here (according to your recent edit anyway) so everything is sculpture, or at the least carving, and of course "art". Johnbod (talk) 03:51, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

No attempts to give the best exemplars, just the quickest careless ones! Change it to "works of art" or whatever. You are welcome to reword, copyedit and improve the article as and where appropriate. You are right, it should be "reliefs" and not "relief artworks", etc. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 04:05, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

As I accepted the GOCE request left by Sarah, I have been working my way through the article. Some of the phrasing is cumbersome and taking some time to interpret. That being said, I hadn't noticed the number of times that "artwork" had been used. I'll prune the usage where appropriate during my copyedit. Blackmane (talk) 05:09, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Blackmane. Your effort, and GOCE team in general, is very helpful and much appreciated. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 13:04, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Now down to 2! Thanks! Johnbod (talk) 02:12, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch and Johnbod: In the Hindu monuments section, (Caves 13-29), there is a statement about work starting on cave 19 in the first period of construction but later it states that cave 19 was one of the last to be constructed. Would either of you have access to the sources to clarify this? Blackmane (talk) 11:19, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Blackmane: Unless Johnbod does it sooner, I will locate the source and check/clarify this by tomorrow. Thank you, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 11:30, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• Michell, George, The Penguin Guide to the Monuments of India, Volume 1: Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, 1989, Penguin Books, ISBN 0140081445 says it was one of the earliest Hindu caves, with 20 & 21. Page 358. Johnbod (talk) 13:00, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I've adjusted the text accordingly. Blackmane (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch and Johnbod: thanks for your patience in waiting for me to complete this copyedit. It's been quite difficult to get time between work and RL commitments. I've finished the copyedit but some statements are not clear to me as when I try to use Google preview, the pages I need are not included in the preview. Below are a couple of statements that require some checking, if you happen to have the physical text

1. Visitors, desecration and damage paragraph 1: "Ellora was known to have been frequented by Buddhist monks in the 9th and 10th centuries" This needs a source
2. Visitors, desecration and damage paragraph 1: Some of these accounts suggest the importance of Ellora, but include ahistorical claims; for example, a description of the caves by Venetian traveller Niccolao Manucci is based on interviewing Mughal officials who made claims that "...they were executed by the ancient Chinese" The page of the reference are not available to me in Google preview.

thanks, Blackmane (talk) 05:18, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Blackmane: I embedded quotes in both cases for your convenience. Please feel free to wordsmith it further. Thanks for the steady progress, I for one admire your work. As always, there is no hurry. Please take your time. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 17:25, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch: Thanks for that. I've tweaked the text after your addition to the sourcing. That is the last part of the copy editing that needed to be done. Please feel free to ping me or drop a message on my TP if you need anything. Regards. Blackmane (talk) 01:11, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I have not done any copyediting for this section. The text is particularly thin and requires expansion before a copy edit would make sense. Blackmane (talk) 06:07, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Blackmane: I revised the Cave 34 section. Would appreciate another look, whenever you find some time. Thanks, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 13:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch: I've run my comb through the section and polished it up a bit. Blackmane (talk) 01:33, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 01:47, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

On another pernickety point, this should use (a formal version of) Indian English, which surely generally means British rather than US spellings. But I notice "center" rather than "centre" here and in other articles. Johnbod (talk) 02:15, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Johnbod: Indeed. I take part / much of the blame. My British/Indian spelling skill is not too good. I edit using a dictation system plus auto-correct that messes things further. I clean up as I go along. This is a problem with some of my Southeast Asia/Africa/West Asia space article contributions too. I wish our wikipedia coding wizards created a bot which fixes this automatically for certain cat of articles. Meanwhile, please feel free to change American -> British/Indian/whatever spellings! Appreciate your help, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 03:06, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I would say the fault lies with me. For the most part, I have kept the use of British English (as I should being a resident of a Commonwealth nation!) but obviously overlooked these ones. I've changed all instances of "center" to "centre" to maintain consistency. I'll double check for words ending in "-or" which would end in "-our" in British English. Blackmane (talk) 10:41, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Elora (\e-ˈlȯr-ə\, IAST: Vērūḷ) (एलोरा)

Vērūḷ is not a transliteration of एलोरा, which is (surprise) ēlōrā. So where does Vērūḷ come from? —Tamfang (talk) 16:35, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

In the section The Hindu monuments: Caves 13–29, under the sub-section Early Hindu temples: Dhumar Lena, Cave 29, the first sentence says "Construction in the early Hindu caves commenced before any of the Buddhist or Jain caves." This is factually incorrect as according to the World Heritage Series: Elephanta article in page 18 to 19 mentions, "In Maharashtra the rock-cut activity can be broadly divided into three phases viz. the Buddhist (BC 200 - AD 600), Hindu (AD 600 - 1000) and Jaina (AD 9th - 12th century ). Of the 1500 or so rock cut caves, nearly 1000 are Buddhist, 300 Hindu and 200 Jaina." This shows that the earliest caves were Buddhist, preceding the Hindu phase and the later Jain phase.

Source: https://archive.org/details/ELEPHANTAWORLDHERITAGESERIES/page/18/mode/2up

My suggested sentence to put there is: "The construction of the early Hindu caves began after the earliest Buddhist caves but before the Jain caves." Marvelcanon1 (talk) 10:16, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I expect we used to say this before some Hindu chauvinist changed it - you might check the page history. Johnbod (talk) 17:14, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Johnbod, I am currently semi-blocked and can’t make the edit myself. Could you please help me to update the sentence using the source (World Heritage Series: Elephanta, pages 18 to19) that i have mentioned above? Marvelcanon1 (talk) 04:59, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Comment: The timeline for Ellora seems to be specific, and differs from the general timeline for the caves of Maharashtra taken as a whole, as explained in Ray, Himanshu Prabha; Kulshreshtha, Salila; Suvrathan, Uthara (13 October 2022). The Routledge Handbook of Hindu Temples: Materiality, Social History and Practice. Taylor & Francis. p. 366. ISBN 978-1-000-78581-4.:

"These early developments find expression in the multi-religious site of Ellora, 30 kilometers northwest of the city of Aurangabad, which is home to 34 rock-cut temples and monasteries of all three religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Excavation of rock-cut caves at Ellora began in the late 6th century with a few Shaiva monuments and continued until the 10th with renewed activity in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the 9th century excavations focused on both Hindu and Jain caves. The 12 Buddhist caves are dated from 600 to 730 CE, while the Jain caves were the last to be carved in the 9th and 10th centuries. Lisa Owen emphasizes the fact that the caves to the three different religious affiliations were not carved in separate phases, but the work often crossed religious boundaries and was carried out simultaneously. It is also not often appreciated that the earliest caves at Ellora were affiliated to Hinduism and were carved into a large outcrop of basalt strategically located at the center of the site near the Vale Ganga waterfall.". पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 05:29, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying, that makes more sense. Marvelcanon1 (talk) 14:16, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes. Also, lower in the article section on Buddhist caves we say "It was initially thought that the Buddhist caves were the earliest structures that were created between the fifth and eighth centuries, with caves 1–5 in the first phase (400–600) and 6–12 in the later phase (650–750), but modern scholars now consider the construction of Hindu caves to have been before the Buddhist caves.[62][63]." So I think the article is in fact right. Johnbod (talk) 14:24, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Please note the original text from the book-- "For him, Ellora is a royal monument that depicts the court life of an ancient king of India, making it comparable to pre-Islamic Persian monuments such as Persepolis.° The statue of Shiva in the Kailas temple is explained as a royal portrait. Third, and most unexpectedly, he only makes a strong bow to religion when he calls upon God to forgive his former patron, Sultan ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah, for destroying the temples of Vijayanagar. This last gesture turns the stereotype of Muslim iconoclasm on its head. Shirazi acknowledges that temple destruction has taken place in military and political contexts of conquest, but he deplores it as a violation of beauty and, ultimately, as an offense against God."

In this sentence with "violation of beauty," Ellora temple is not specifically mentioned. In fact, the sentence with "deplores it as a violation of beauty" follows the sentence about Vijayanagar temples. Even the original text of Shirazi(which I have not written here) mentions destruction of temples at Vijayanagar by his patron, not of Ellora.Nathularog (talk) 15:00, 1 December 2025 (UTC)