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Figure 1 . The Lingodbhava Mural at the Ganesh Lena group, Ellora. Shiva emerges from a blue column of light at the centre, worshipped by Brahma (left) and Vishnu (right). Credit: Anirudh Kanisetti CC BY 4.0

A pillar of glorious light, extending from the heavens to the deep waters, splits apart. Emerging from within, a titanic, gleaming god laughs. Awestruck, the divinities outside cease their argument and do him homage. And so Brahma and Vishnu accepted the superiority of Shiva.

This is the story of the Lingodbhava, Shiva’s emergence from a celestial pillar, one of the most important Shaivite legends. The image above is an exceedingly rare – and exquisite – depiction of the Lingodbhava. It is one of the few murals which can be linked to the patronage of the imperial Rashtrakuta dynasty of the Deccan, one of the great superpowers of the medieval world. This article will examine the pan-Asian networks which produced it, further developing our understanding of the art of this lost empire.

The Rashtrakutas were held in great esteem by their medieval contemporaries. The Arab traveller al-Masudi, writing of the Rashtrakuta emperor Amoghavarsha I in the 9th century CE, described him as a great friend of Arabs. His power, according to al-Masudi, rivalled the Abbasid Caliph, the Emperor of China, and the Byzantine Emperor. Yet Rashtrakuta remains, whether architectural or mural, are scattered; many of their temples were destroyed or abandoned. The mural we are looking at today is an exception. Generally understudied, 1 it confirms the astonishing reach of artistic networks in 9th century South Asia, extending from Central Asia to the Coromandel Coast.

1 To my knowledge, the first scholarly description of this mural was published only in 2012. See Giuliano, Laura. “A mural painting in a cave of the Gaṇeśa Leṇa and the role of Liṅgodbhavamūrti at Ellora.” In Giuliano, Laura (ed.) Ajanta e oltre: La pittura murale in India e Asia Centrale. Rome: Cartemide, 2012.

Figure 2 . Right portion of the ceiling. The Lingodbhava is in a separate panel to the left. Credit: Anirudh Kanisetti CC BY 4.0

This Lingodbhava mural is one part of fully-decorated ceiling, belonging to a rock-cut shrine high amongst the basalt cliffs of Ellora. Ellora is best known today for the the Kailasanatha temple, the spectacular monolith excavated under Rashtrakuta patronage in the 8th century CE. Compared to Ajanta, the 5th century Buddhist complex some distance away, Ellora’s paintings have generally received less attention than its sculptures. But the Rashtrakuta court were active at Ellora for the better part of 150 years, commissioning a variety of monuments – from multi-storeyed Jain temples linked to important teachers; to imperial Shaivite structures to connect royalty and divinity; to tiny shrines intended as ascetic’s dwellings. Many were covered in spectacular paintings, of which only fragments survive.

Figure 3 . The Ganesh Lena group from the south, photographed in April 2025. Credit: Anirudh Kanisetti CC BY 4.0

Among the latter are the “Ganesh Lena” group of caves, so named because of an impressive Ganesha sculpture present in one of them. These caves are clustered upstream of Ellora’s great waterfall, around a natural pool with some man-made modifications.

We know the Rashtrakutas were active at these sacred waters from the mid 8th century onwards, when king Dantidurga I (r. 753–56 CE) bathed at the waterfall and made various grants. The Kailasanatha monolith followed soon after.The Ganesh Lena caves, roughly contemporary, may have been part of Rashtrakuta attempts to reshape the site. By offering dwellings to holy men near the origins of the waterfall, the Rashtrakutas could clearly display their devotion and their generosity to residents, traders and pilgrims at Ellora.

The specific identities of patrons at the Ganesh Lena cannot be determined. Indeed,it seems that the excavation programme there was never completed: the Lingodbhava cave is the only one that possesses a fully painted ceiling. But we can be confident that this cave had a particularly wealthy patron, not just because the quality of the murals, but because of a specific colour that was used. For the Lingodbhava mural depicts Shiva’s cosmic pillar gleaming a radiant, exceedingly expensive blue: possibly lapis lazuli or cobalt.

Lapis lazuli, one of the most valuable blue pigments ever discovered, is not an Indian mineral. Ellora’s painters could only have sourced it from Afghanistan. Yet Afghanistan, and Central Asia more broadly, were facing severe political turmoil in the late 8th century. Arab armies were raiding the area, having conquered Iran a few decades prior. Meanwhile, newly-formed Tibetan polities were also challenging the status quo. It stands to reason that both must have disrupted trade. So how could this colour have ended up in the heart of the Deccan?

Historian Tansen Sen may have the answer, in his reassessment of the career of the Kashmiri king Lalitaditya Muktapida (c. 725–761 CE). 2 Sen suggests that, in alliance with Tang China and various Central Asian city-states, Lalitaditya managed to keep trade routes in the region fairly stable. Indeed, this Lingodbhava mural is contemporaneous with the spectacular Sogdian depictions of Hindu gods at Panjikent and Samarkand in present-day Tajikistan, as well as the cave frescoes of Dunhuang in present-day China.

Figure 4 . The Sogdian goddess Nana – an ancient figure with ties to the Kushans and the Hindu goddess Durga– depicted in an 8th-9th century CE mural in Bunjikat, Tajikistan. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

2 SEN, TANSEN. “KAŚMĪR, TANG CHINA, AND MUKTĀPĪḌA LALITĀ-DITYA’S ASCENDANCY OVER THE SOUTHERN HINDUKUSH REGION.” Journal of Asian History 38, no. 2 (2004): 141–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41933381.

All made extensive use of blue pigments. Indeed, as Dr Helen Philon of the Deccan Heritage Foundation has pointed out (personal correspondence), the colour blue was considered so prestigious that Chinese Tang Dynasty ceramics employed cobalt as an inexpensive alternative. Contemporaneous Arab ceramics in Samarra and Cairo,dating to the 8th–10th centuries, also used cobalt. By the 11th–12th centuries CE, the craze for lapis had reached Europe as well: archaeological findings have established that it was used in manuscript painting, and that convents of nuns were involved in its storage and use.

Figure 5 . Bowl with cobalt decoration on tin-glazed earthenware. Iraq, 9th century. Credit: The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art K.1.2014.208. Via Wikimedia Commons

Figure 6 . An 8th century covered jar, Tang Dynasty, coloured blue with cobalt. Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art CC BY 1.0. Via Wikimedia Commons

So what was Ellora’s Lingodbhava painted with? Cobalt or lapis? Either would be significant for our understanding of Asia’s art history. If it is cobalt, then we would know that Rashtrakuta artistic sensibilities were in conversation with those of their Arab and Chinese trading partners. If it is lapis, then we have evidence of trade exchanges between the Deccan and Central Asia at a very early period, even amidst political turmoil. While cobalt is the most likely candidate, scientific tests will be able to further clarify this.

Blue pigments aren’t the only similarity between Rashtrakuta art and that of their wider world. The mural traditions of Dunhuang, Sogdiana and Ellora all share a strong sense of outline, a restrained treatment of cloth and shadow, the use of three-quarters profile to depict attendants or subsidiary figures, and backgrounds represented with flat, saturated colours. However, it may prove impossible to precisely trace out the direction and carriers of this cross-pollination. Possibly, along with pigments, exotic woods, ceramics, textiles, spices, metals, perfumes, and other fineries, painted panels and manuscripts were also being exchanged across early medieval Eurasia.

Figure 7 . The goddess Parvati and an attendant admire the dance of Shiva. Credit: Anirudh Kanisetti CC BY 4.0

In general, the Ajanta paintings, c. 5th century CE, are held to represent the high watermark of Indian “influence” on Asian painting traditions—after which regional developments took over. But Ellora’s Lingodbhava tells us that connections endured well into the 8th century: cosmopolitan, international tastes lived alongside vigourous regional traditions.

Indeed, as art historian Laura Giuliano writes in her study of this mural, the Lingodbhava icon was first represented in sculpture in the deep south of India around the 6th century CE. Following various wars, migrations, and commercial exchanges, Lingodbhava arrived in the Deccan in the 7th century CE. Little more than a century after, the Rashtrakutas began to depict him in Ellora. He is particularly prominent in the Kailasanatha temple. The Baroda copper-plates of Karkka Suvarnavarsha, a cadet Rashtrakuta prince, suggest that the great monolith was conceived as a self-manifestation of Shiva. Lingodbhava is just such a manifestation, associated with Shiva’s lordship over the cosmos, and the Rashtrakuta kings-of-kings must have sought association with him for this reason. This also strengthens the case for the Ganesh Lena caves being courtly commissions.

As such, Ellora’s spectacular Lingodbhava mural is a sign of Asian networks extending thousands of kilometres from the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the waves of the Bay of Bengal. Today the Ganesh Lena group of caves are somewhat out of the main tourist current at Ellora, and the paintings continue to silently crumble.

This article is part of a monthly series by DHF Fellow Anirudh Kanisetti about the art, architecture and culture of the medieval Deccan region.