There is a tale that goes that a man once asked Michelangelo how the difficulties he must have had when sculpting his statue of David. Apocryphally, Michelangelo replied:

It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David.

...and so it was with Kailasa Temple, hewn from a single very very large rock. The difference, of course, is that the rock was hollowed out to form rooms, staircases, shrines and yes, even statues.

This would have been labor intensive to be sure, but not all that difficult. A man with a hammer and chisel can dig out quite a bit of rock in a day; it's been estimated that it would have taken 250 workers about six years, more or less, to make Kailasa Temple.

While it's rather amazing to think of making a building from the inside out, if you live in a northern climate, you've probably done much the same. Ever dug a fort out of a snowbank? I lived in Minnesota for a few years and the university I attended actually dug a system of snow tunnels from the main dorm building to the bulk of campus via a large park area. True, snow is not rock, but it's the same concept.

It just took time and manpower. All it took to create the Grand Canyon was water and time, after all.