Cigarette Card

Wills’s Cigarettes “Wonders of the Past” Cigarette Card #29 “Rock Temples of Ellora”

Produced in 1926 by W. D. & H. O. Wills.

Issued by The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain & Ireland) Ltd.

Text on reverse of card reads:

“Ellora in Hyderabad, India, had already long been a sacred spot with many cave-temples when Krishna I, in the eighth century A.D., decided to make there an earthly counterpart to the god Siva’s celestial paradise, the Kailasa. The result was not a cave-temple, but a complete building carved bodily from the rock. Down from the top of a cliff a pit-like court 280 by 160 feet was excavated to a depth of 150 feet, leaving a
vast central core which was subsequently carved with incredible labour and wonderful skill into a temple. The plinth is surrounded by a frieze of elephants seeming to carry the temple on their backs”