DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70300#0166
140
Kirby’s wonderful museum.
chamber, protruding by pillars resting, like the other parts,
on elephants. The four centre pillars of the interior of the
temple are wanting, thus leaving an open passage from the
door of one portico to the other. These are rather below
the level of the floor of the temple, and are richly sculptured
throughout, and instead of the pilasters to uphold the roof, on
each side of the doors from the main temple are two female
figures, twelve feet high, whose heads, touching the cornice,
appear to bend, yet in a graceful attitude, under the weight
they sustain. It will be recollected and observed how strong
a similarity these figures have to the Caryatides of the
Greeks, and I believe it would be a difficult question to solve,
whether the Indians borrowed them from that people, or
vice versa. The porticos have seats, on one of which I at-
tempted to cut my name, at the expence of my knife. From
that which is to the south of the temple, there is supposed to
have been, and appearances countenance the idea, a bridge
thrown across the area to the excavated halls of the cliff,
from which there is no communication from below, as there
is with them on the northern side. Behind the recess, or
sanctum sanctorum, (opposite the principal entrance), which
runs backwards outside the temple near forty feet, is a bal-
cony or open gallery, which passes from two doors, one on
each side of the colossal groups, out of the great chamber,
round its side, and the end of it, and has five smaller temples
of a similar shape to the principal one, two on the sides and
three on the eastern termination, which complete the whole
structure. They are all sculptured in the same manner, and
supported by the animals beneath, of which I fancy there
must be in all from eighty to one hundred. The roofs of the
great and smaller temples gradually rise to points, and the
outside walls of all are carved in pannels of grotesque and
obscene figures. The whole has, at some late period, re-
ceived a coating of sand-coloured plaster, which has been
painted over in different colours, and even now, though more
than half destroyed, takes much from the sculpture. The
Kirby’s wonderful museum.
chamber, protruding by pillars resting, like the other parts,
on elephants. The four centre pillars of the interior of the
temple are wanting, thus leaving an open passage from the
door of one portico to the other. These are rather below
the level of the floor of the temple, and are richly sculptured
throughout, and instead of the pilasters to uphold the roof, on
each side of the doors from the main temple are two female
figures, twelve feet high, whose heads, touching the cornice,
appear to bend, yet in a graceful attitude, under the weight
they sustain. It will be recollected and observed how strong
a similarity these figures have to the Caryatides of the
Greeks, and I believe it would be a difficult question to solve,
whether the Indians borrowed them from that people, or
vice versa. The porticos have seats, on one of which I at-
tempted to cut my name, at the expence of my knife. From
that which is to the south of the temple, there is supposed to
have been, and appearances countenance the idea, a bridge
thrown across the area to the excavated halls of the cliff,
from which there is no communication from below, as there
is with them on the northern side. Behind the recess, or
sanctum sanctorum, (opposite the principal entrance), which
runs backwards outside the temple near forty feet, is a bal-
cony or open gallery, which passes from two doors, one on
each side of the colossal groups, out of the great chamber,
round its side, and the end of it, and has five smaller temples
of a similar shape to the principal one, two on the sides and
three on the eastern termination, which complete the whole
structure. They are all sculptured in the same manner, and
supported by the animals beneath, of which I fancy there
must be in all from eighty to one hundred. The roofs of the
great and smaller temples gradually rise to points, and the
outside walls of all are carved in pannels of grotesque and
obscene figures. The whole has, at some late period, re-
ceived a coating of sand-coloured plaster, which has been
painted over in different colours, and even now, though more
than half destroyed, takes much from the sculpture. The