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Tales of the Gods
Most temples are built up, stone by stone. This one was carved down, out of a single mountainside, and there was no way to fix a mistake once the rock was gone.
Every other building begins at the bottom. This one began at the top of a hill, and every mistake was permanent.
Around 773 CE, the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I commissioned a temple representing Mount Kailasa, Shiva's Himalayan home, at Ellora in the Deccan.
His engineers did not quarry blocks and assemble them. They went to a basalt hillside and started cutting downward.
The procedure, as far as it can be reconstructed, ran like this.
Cut three deep trenches into the top of the escarpment. That defines a rectangular block of living rock, freed on three sides, and still joined to the hill at the back.
Then work down through that block from the roof. Carving as you descend.
The roof of the temple was finished before its floor existed. The tops of the towers were complete while the courtyards below them were still solid stone. The sculptors worked their way down through a mountain, and everything they cut away was gone.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.