Rock-cut Buddhist temple cave: Karla

Carved Straight from the Bedrock: The Great Chaitya Cave of India

(Ancient Architects) Oct. 7, 2025: There are a number of famous examples of enigmatic rock-cut architecture in the world. India is one place in particular that is famous for its manmade (deva-made) caves.

There are the famous Buddhist Ellora Caves that date back to 600-1000 AD, which includes the breathtaking and seemingly impossible Kailasa Temple, the Ajanta caves, which are even older, but there are also the lesser-known Karla Caves.

They are not all as elaborate as the others, but it is a site that should certainly be on everyone's radar. The Karla Caves are located near Lonavala, Maharashtra, a complex of amazing ancient Buddhist Indian temples carved directly from bedrock, dating back from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD.

Maharashtra has many larger examples of artificial (human-made) cave networks, but Cave 8 at Karla, known as The Grand Chaitya Cave, is the largest and most completely preserved chaitya hall of the period with beautiful, ornate architecture, featuring many examples of fine sculpture. Watch this video to find out more about this human wonder of the world.

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Buddhism's Karla Caves, India

Magnificent rock-cut hollow hall with stupa

The Karla Caves (also Karli Caves, Karle Caves, Karla Cells) are a complex of ancient Buddhist Indian rock-cut caves at Karli near Lonavala, Maharashtra State.

The site is 10.9 kms from Lonavala. Others in the area include Bhaja Caves, Patan Buddhist Cave, Bedse Caves, and Nasik Caves.

The shrines were developed over the period from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE. The oldest of the cave shrines is believed to date back to 160 BCE, having arisen near a major ancient trade route, running eastward from the Arabian Sea into the Deccan.

The group at Karla is one of the older and smaller of the many rock-cut Buddhist sites in Maharashtra, India.

It is one of the best-known because of the famous "Grand Chaitya" (Cave 8), the largest and most completely preserved chaitya hall of the period, containing unusual quantities of fine sculpture on a large scale [1].

Cross section of Grand Hall with stupa (Karla)

Many traders, Western Satraps of Saka [aka Shakyian, Scythian] origin and Satavahana rulers made grants for construction and support of these caves.

Karla's location in Maharashtra places it in a region that marks the division between North India and South India [2].

Buddhists, having become identified with commerce and manufacturing through their early association with traders, tended to locate their monastic establishments in natural geographic formations close to major trade routes so as to provide lodging houses for travelling traders [3].

Today, the cave complex is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India [4]. More