The Kailas at Ellora: A New View of a Misunderstood Masterwork

DETAILS : 

• Author : Roger Vogler , Peeyush Sekhasaria 
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mapin Publishing
  
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ 1 March 2014
  
• Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
  
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8189995863
  
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8189995867

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Kailas at Ellora: A New View of a Misunderstood Masterwork is a groundbreaking architectural and historical study of Cave 16 at the Ellora UNESCO World Heritage site. Authors Roger Vogler (an architect) and Peeyush Sekhasaria (an architect and researcher) challenge the traditional narratives surrounding this 8th-century monolith, offering a fresh technical and aesthetic perspective on how and why it was created.

The Kailas Temple is not "built" in the traditional sense; it is a monolithic sculpture carved from the top down out of a single basalt cliffside—the largest of its kind in the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roger Vogler is an American architect with a deep, lifelong fascination with Indian rock-cut architecture.

The Architect’s Eye: Vogler spent decades studying the geometry of the Kailas. He famously approached the temple not as a "cave," but as a "negative building"—where the space is created by what is removed rather than what is added.

His Mission: He sought to debunk the idea that the temple was built by "primitive" methods. Through his research, he aimed to prove that the chief architect of the 8th century possessed mathematical and spatial visualization skills that would rival modern-day structural engineers.

Legacy: His work is credited with shifting the academic conversation away from the mythology of the site toward the methodology of its construction.