WE ARE INTRODUCED TO THE CAVES OF ELLORA
The carved work may be said to be of two kinds. There was a sort of architectural or formal ornament in low relief resembling in style and treatment Assyrian work, in which the lotus frequently appeared treated as a flat rosette and used as pateræ, arranged in rows with intervals; and there was a high relief treatment of figure sculpture. Among the horizontal courses of carved decoration I noted a treatment of the garland or swag, the ends being twisted through rings from which they were represented as depending. These might have been of a Greek or Roman pattern.
The exterior carving of the temple in the parts sheltered under eaves and by doorways showed traces of painting—the colours being red and green on white. The whole of the surfaces appear to have been coated with plaster to receive colour, in the same way as may be seen at the temple of Castor and Pollux at Girgenti.
The stone when exposed to the weather was very much blackened and resembled the gritstone of Derbyshire in colour and texture.
The Temple was dedicated to Siva, but the whole Hindu pantheon of the Vedic gods appeared to be sculptured in this marvellous place, as well as the different avators of Siva.
The Hindu religion is really a great system of nature worship, all the powers, forces, and influences being personified and symbolised, nothing being accounted “common or unclean”—the elephant-headed Ganesha and the monkey god Hunuman taking their place as “eligible deities”—the whole scheme resting on the acknowledgment of the sexual origin of life. The generative organs themselves being revered as sacred, and symbolised in the mysterious Lingam which is enshrined in all the Hindu temples, and the object of special devotion.
The god Siva and Parvati his spouse form the principal subject among the sculptures of the Kylas. A striking design rather Egyptian in feeling was to be seen in a large carved panel of Parvati represented as seated on the water, or rather on a mass of lotus leaves and flowers—the flower of life—with attendant elephants symmetrically arranged on each side, showering water upon the goddess from their trunks. In all countries religious symbols are taken from familiar and characteristic objects common to each, although, as Count Goblet d’Albiella points out in his most interesting and learned work on the “Migration of Symbols,” there is also a process of exchange and adaptation in ideas between different peoples and countries by means of which we get imported types, which, however, become naturalised and reappear in the form or convention peculiar to the country of their adoption.
AND ITS WASPS!