INTRODUCTION

ELLORA CAVE. Rashtrakutas most treasurable monument. It is a rock cut art piece from charnandi hills. We see in that time they have very skilled and hardworking labours who actually worked to achieve such a great monument. The sculptures and the art they use i.e. Dravidian art was done very neatly and intricate too, which increased the value of monument. It is an interesting fact that mostly rock are craved form bottom to top but the Ellora caves were cut from top to bottom, so we can judge the skills of that architect, it was exceptionally great. Through all this ELLORA emerged as an art work of excellence. Kailasha temple (cave no. 16) was huge temple of hindus, it was th elargest monolithic human built structure, it took 100 years to get completed.

PREFACE
In this book, we are going to inform about art and architecture of RASHTRAKUTAS dynasty. What style they use? Due to which reasons their monument got so much of recognition and importance? The main concept of making monument by the dynasty was to show their power, wealth and supremacy. Our main motive is to make you aware about Rashtrakuta dynasty, its achievement and art and architect they adopted.

DOWN FALL OF RASHTRAKUTA DYNASTY

In the ninth century Cholas controlled a large part of the peninsula. The Cholas rose in importance after the downfall of the Rashtrakutas. The greatest Chola rulers were Rajaraja (AD 985-1014) and his son Rajendra-I (AD 1014-1044). Both Rajaraja and Rajendra-I were known for their expansionist policies. Rajaraja destroyed the Chera Navy at Trivandrum and attacked Quilon, annexed SriLanka to the nothern part of the empire. Rajaraja wanted to control the trade of South Eastern countries.