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Many of you will have heard of the incredible and somewhat unbelievable human accomplishment known as Kailasa Temple, the largest and most magnificent rock-cut Hindu temple at the Ellora Caves, Maharashtra, India. I made a video about this site 3 years ago and I’ve only just realised it’s had 1.4 million views in that time, making it one of the most-watched videos on this channel: I’ll be looking to do an updated and more in-depth video on this site in the coming weeks. But before we go back to that, I want to put another one on your radar, known as Vettuvan Koil. It is located in Kalugumalai, a Panchayat town in the Thoothukudi District of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was made in the 8th century and is attributed to the early Pandya Dynasty. It is dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. Incredibly, just like the Kailasa Temple, it is cut straight out of the hillside. It is one complete piece, still connected to the bedrock, an immaculate work of art that surprisingly was left unfinished. Praveen Mohan did make a video on the site in 2018 and I came across it whilst researching this week. You can watch it here: Praveen has speculated, and a number of websites have too, that Vettuvan Koil could actually be a prototype, a scale model of the Kailasa Temple due to a number of similarities between the two structures. Could this actually be true? Is there a connection between the two structures? What do we actually know about the monolithic rock-cut Vettuvan Koil? Watch the video to learn more. All images are taken from Google Images for education purposes only. Please subscribe to Ancient Architects, Like the video and please leave a comment below. #AncientArchitects #AncientIndia #VettuvanKoil
