This temple is I should think about the same size as that at Mádura, but more open like the Tanjore temple. There are four gópuras of about equal size—120 feet high or so—at the four points of the compass. On entering by the eastern one the hall of a thousand columns stands away in the court to the right, and gives the idea of a complete temple in itself. The sides and back end are closed in, but the front forms a sort of portico, and columns similar to those of the portico—every one a monolith—extend through the entire interior. There is a lane or aisle down the middle, and then on each side they stand thick, in rows perhaps ten feet apart. As you go in the gloom gets deeper and deeper. Only here and there a gap in the external wall throws a weird light. The whole suggests a rock cave cut in multitudinous pillars to support the overlying weight, or a gloomy forest of tree-trunks. But the columns are commonplace in themselves, and their number and closeness together under a flat roof of no great weight is not architecturally admirable. When you reach the interior sanctum, where you might expect to find the god at home, you discover a mere bare cavity, so dark that you cannot see the roof, and occupied by innumerable bats who resent your intrusion with squeaks and shrieks. But my guide explained to me that twice a year the god does come to dwell there, and then they clean the place up and decorate it with lamps for a season.
A large tank stands just west of this hall—a tank 200 feet long I should think—in which men (and women) were washing their feet and clothes. These tanks are attached to every temple. At Mádura there is a very beautiful one, “the golden lotus tank,” two miles away from the temple, with a pagoda on an island in the midst of it—to which they resort at the Taypúsam festival. Also at Mylapore, Madras, there is a handsome tank with pagoda just outside the temple; but mostly they are within the precincts.
TEMPLE AND TANK AT MYLAPORE, MADRAS.
Entering the inner inclosure at Chidámbaram you come to various arcades and shrines, where Brahmans and chetties raged. The chetties have great influence at Chidámbaram; their caste supplies I believe the main funds of the temple—which is practically therefore in their hands. I was presented with flower garlands and a lime, and expected to make my money-offering in front of a little temple, of Vishnu I think, which they seasonably explained to me was to be roofed with gold! On the other hand—to the left—was a temple to Siva—both these forms being worshiped here. Into the shrine of Parvati I did not penetrate, but it looked ancient and curious. Fergusson says that this shrine belongs to the 14th or 15th centuries, and the inner sanctuaries to somewhere about 1000 A.D., while the hall of the thousand columns—which shows Mahomedan influence—is as late as the 17th century.
An elderly stoutish man, half naked, but with some authority evidently—who proved afterwards to be the head of the chetties—announced in a loud voice that I was to be treated with respect and shown as much as possible—which only meant that I was to give as large an offering as possible. Then an excited-looking fellow came up, a medium-sized man of about forty, and began talking cockney English as fluently and idiomatically as if he had been born by the Thames, rattling off verses and nursery rhymes with absurd familiarity. The rest said he was a cranky Brahman with an insane gift for language—knew Sanskrit and ever so many tongues.
Escaping from these I left the temple and went into the village to see the goldsmiths who are employed (by the chetties) on work connected with its restoration. Found a large workshop where they were making brass roof-pinnacles, salvers, pedestals for images, etc., and plating the same with gold leaf or plates—also store of solid gold things—armlets and breastplates for the gods, etc.—another touch remindful of Greek life. The gold leaf was being beaten out between thin membranes—many leaves at once—with a hammer. All handwork, of course.
My guide—who is the station clerk and a Brahman, while his station-master is a Sudra (O this steam-engine!)—told me on the way back that the others at the station often advised him to give up his caste practices; but he had plenty of time in the middle of the day, between the trains, to go through his ablutions and other ceremonies, and he did not see why he should not do so.
As we walked along the road we met two pilgrims—with orange-colored cloths—coming along. One of them, a hairy, wild, and obstinate-looking old man, evidently spotted the hated Englishman from afar, and as he passed put his tongue gently but firmly out at me!