Mt. Kailas

Larger than I could have ever imagined with architectural and sculptural complexity unrivalled by any other rock-cut temples I've seen. Every detail, every angel, floating, every tiny gargoyle, every 20-ft tall freize of 400 arms and 25 heads and 40 micro-sized worshippers cowering all PLANNED. Everything was drawn, diagrammed, designed! 100% pre-planned. Someone looked at the largest cliff-face at the site, hundreds of feet high, maybe thousands of feet deep and said -- CARVE IT UP!

The strangest aspect of Kailas is how much they left solid (for example, the easily 20 story temple-top is almost entirely solid rock. Also, the base (which is at least two stories tall) is also entirely solid. The contrast between the interior architecture which is relatively small and intimate, and the exterior which is the most grandeous, ridiculously huge thing in all of India is staggaring.

Where Ajanta is like an open studio, where 1500 years ago hundreds of artists were given free reign; "Draw 12 Buddhas today! Sculpt a grid of 100 Buddhas today!" Mt. Kailas is a methodized, Mannerist construction; the most ambitious work of architecture and art I've ever seen. Unlike Ajanta, there's no way these works were executed in the timeframe Spink suggests. 15 years is simply not enough, even to move the 250,000 tons of stone they had to excavate.

The relationship with ancient Greek and Roman sculpture/architecture is very clear. Kailas's layout is essentially cruciform, clearly based on human anatomy: Head, Chest, Abdoment, Feet, Arms. The continuous-narrative miniature sculptures certainly harken back to the Triumphal Obelisk of Constantine in Rome. The large-scale sculptures, esp. when they interact with one another, recall the Parthenon or Agamemnon. I am absolutely beginning to question how much influence ancient Greek and Roman art/arch. had over these projects here in India.

Kailas proposes man vs. nature problems unprecededented in the previous caves. To literally level a mountain (actually, as a King, to even propose that idea) in the name of your God. It is the most ostentatious, arrogant, ambitious project ever.

These ancient works of art do not ask the question "What is the meaning of making your work?" but "What can we, as a civilization, accomplish together?"