Photography: Ellora Caves #8

The first question I asked when seeing this sculpture, along with a hundred other examples at the Ellora Caves is, "what happened to the face?"

There are hundreds of statues in the Ellora complex of caves with the heads (and arms) desecrated and hacked off. This obviously took a tremendous amount of energy and focused rage to beat a basalt rock sculptured head into an unrecognizable state using primitive means. The historic records reveal a bit on who defaced them and when.

After the Mogals invaded India they paid little attention to sites such as Allora, Ajanta and the Pandalini caves. At the time these sites were overgrown and not active monastic dwellings. In fact several of the Mogal rulers were impressed by the Indian arts of antiquity and even invited artisans, skilled in the traditions of Indian art, to help with designing and building a new synthesis of Islamic and Indian art and architecture. Akbar was the most famous of these. He embraced the symbology and aesthetic of India and went on to finance palaces where lotus flowers, elephants and peacocks live along with traditional Islamic non-representational geometric patterns.

By all accounts the majority of Mogal rulers had a policy of 'live and let live' when it came to ancient caves lined with carvings of Hindu or Buddhist dieties. It wasn't until later into the 16th and 17th century that reports of these sites being vandalized started to surface. Even the remaining Muslim rulers were appalled by this news. The historic record reports that roaming bands of hoodlums went about destroying these statues, not some state sponsored cleansing of blasphemous idols; just common ordinary ignorant assholes destroying art they didn't take the time to try to understand.