Vedic Indian Timeline

600 BCE – 1200 CE · 5 sites

All sites in this period

Kailasa Temple (Cave 16) at Ellora, carved from a single basalt outcrop, Maharashtra, India

Country Record

Longest Recorded History in India

Ellora Caves

100 BCE – 1100 CE

The world's largest rock-cut monastic and temple complex — 34 monasteries and shrines carved directly into a 2-kilometre basalt escarpment in Maharashtra, representing Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain traditions side by side. The Hindu Kailasa Temple (Cave 16), hewn from a single enormous rock in the 8th century CE, is the largest monolithic structure ever carved from stone and one of humanity's most audacious feats of rock-cut architecture.

ClassicalLate AntiqueEarly Medieval

Khajuraho

950 CE – 1050 CE

India's supreme expression of medieval temple architecture — 25 surviving sandstone temples built by the Chandela dynasty in central India between 950 and 1050 CE, celebrated for their exuberantly carved sculptural programs depicting gods, celestial beings, and erotic scenes, rising from a flat plain with no other settlement in sight.

311

MedievalHigh Medieval

Lumbini

600 BCE – 630 CE

The birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, and one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites in the Buddhist world — a Nepalese sanctuary anchored by an inscribed stone pillar erected in 249 BCE by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, one of the earliest and most reliable epigraphic confirmations of any event in the Buddha's life. Excavations beneath the Maya Devi Temple uncovered a timber shrine radiocarbon dated to the 6th century BCE — the earliest known Buddhist structure anywhere and remarkably consistent with the traditional dating of the Buddha's birth.

311

Iron AgeClassicalHellenistic

The Trimurti Shiva sculpture in the main cave at Elephanta Island

Country Record

Known by the Most Names in India

Elephanta Caves

500 CE – 800 CE

Rock-cut Shaiva temples on Elephanta Island in Mumbai Harbour — famous for the 6-metre Trimurti Shiva and colonnaded main cave — among India's most visited ancient sites and a UNESCO World Heritage monument reached by ferry from the Gateway of India.

ClassicalEarly MedievalMedieval

The Great Stupa of Sanchi, the oldest stone structure in Buddhist architecture

Country Record

Oldest Complex in India

Sanchi

269 BCE – 1200 CE

A hilltop complex in Madhya Pradesh containing the oldest stone structure in Buddhist architecture — the Great Stupa commissioned by Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE — whose four carved gateways (toranas) rank among the greatest achievements of ancient Indian sculpture.

Iron AgeClassicalHellenistic