WAILUA, Kaua'i — In a clearing within Kaua'i Aadheenam's lush gardens, the ping, ping, pinging of metal chipping at stone can be heard as a half-dozen artisans from India put the finishing flourishes on the Hindu monastery's legacy for the ages.

Hand-carved in granite and shipped in pieces to the island from India, the Iraivan Temple is faithful to the precise design formulas defined by South Indian temple builders 1,000 years ago.

The $8 million temple to the god Shiva is the first all-stone Hindu temple outside India, according to the Kaua'i monks. The project is a rarity even in India.

The ranks of skilled carvers from India have dwindled in recent centuries, as stone has yielded to concrete and steel. Design modifications in new temples outside India have become a necessity to make worship at the traditionally open-air spaces bearable during the winters in Canada or New York City.

Lush, tropical Kaua'i doesn't have that problem.

"Actually it's the first all-stone temple made anywhere in quite awhile. I think our architect in India said he's made two in 50 years," said Sannyasin Arumugaswami, a bearded monk enveloped in an orange cotton robe.

Construction began in 1990 and could take another 10 years. The temple has already incorporated 80 shipping containers worth of stone and is surmounted by a gold-gilt cupola carved over three years by just four men.

The temple is the vision of a former ballet dancer and Californian who founded the monastery in 1970, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.

Subramuniyaswami, who died at 74 in 2001, embraced Hindu monasticism in the late 1940s. Today his Kaua'i monastery is home to 22 monks who spend their days in prayer at the monastery's Kadavul Temple or tending the monastery's fruit orchards and livestock.

Subramuniyaswami left specific instructions for the temple's construction. No machinery may be used to cut the stone, which he believed would destroy the stone's "song." Machines are only used to lift some of the larger stones into place.