[391] Most of these particulars, with those that follow regarding the temples, are taken from Capt. Lyon’s description of his photographs of the places. He devotes twenty-six photos. to this temple alone.
[392] The view in this temple in my ‘Picturesque Illustrations of Indian Architecture,’ No. 21, is taken from the corner of this tank.
[393] There is a native plan of this temple in the India Museum, which makes it very much more extensive than my inspection of the part I was allowed access to would have led me to suppose. I do not know, however, how far the plan can be depended upon.
[394] It is supposed, erroneously, I believe (‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ (N.S.) vol. vi. p. 265), to be the Kanchipuram visited by Hiouen Thsang in 640. Nagapatam was more probably the place he indicated.
[395] I was too unwell when I visited Conjeveram to make so careful a survey of its temples as I would have wished to have done.
[396] I have never been able to ascertain even approximately its dimensions. Hundreds visit it, many have photographed, some written descriptions, but to measure dimensions and make even a sketch plan seems beyond the educational capacity of our countrymen.
[397] When I was in Madras, and indeed up to the present year, the temple on the hill of Tripetty or Tirupetty was reputed to be the richest, the most magnificent, as it was certainly the most sacred of all those in the Presidency. So sacred, indeed, was it, that no unbelieving foreigner had ever been allowed to climb the holy hill (2500 ft. high) or profane its sacred precincts. In 1870, a party of police forced their way in, in pursuit of a murderer who had taken refuge there, and a Mr. Gribble, who accompanied them, published this year (1875) an account of what they saw in the ‘Calcutta Review.’ As he exclaims, “Another of the illusions of my youth destroyed.” The temple is neither remarkable for its size nor its magnificence. In these respects it is inferior to Conjeveram, Seringham, and many others; and whatever may be done with its immense revenues, they certainly are not applied to its adornment. It is a fair specimen of a Dravidian temple of the second class, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair.
[398] What I know on this subject I have already said in my work on ‘Rude Stone Monuments,’ p. 455, et seqq.
[399] Some money was, I believe, expended during Lord Napier’s administration on the repairs of this court and its appurtenances, but it was quite beyond the purview of an Anglo-Saxon to make a plan of the place. It is, consequently, very difficult to describe it.
[400] Description attached to Tripe’s Photographs.