As we stood facing the second court, the sacred elephant of the temple came up, his forehead bearing the mark of Vishnu, painted large in red and white. It was amusing to see the animal pick up a two-anna piece from the ground, and pass it over its head to its keeper and driver seated on its neck. Another younger and smaller elephant soon joined the other, and this one had beautiful tusks which his larger companion was without. This one, too, skilfully picked up the small coins in the same way, fumbling with the sensitive finger-like point of his trunk to get hold of them in the crannies of the pavement.
THE SACRED ELEPHANTS OF SERINGHAM—SECURING TWO-ANNA PIECES!
We then, passing across this second court, entered the Hall of a Thousand Columns—a sort of architectural forest. Before this is reached, however, there is a smaller hall which has a very remarkable range of carved columns—the most extraordinary carved stone work in Southern India. They are strictly speaking rather columnar brackets, bracketed columns or corbels resting on bases, and they represent warriors on horses spearing lions and tigers. The chief feature in each is the rearing horse, which with its rider and lance, and smaller figures below, and the attacking tiger, or, sometimes, elephant, form a connected group cut out of a single block of stone. These sculptures have so barbaric and antique an appearance that it seems surprising they should only date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries together with the whole of the temple buildings.
A curious effect is given to the interior of some of the temples here by the practice of whitewashing the pillars and walls, and leaving the carved figures untouched in the stone, which gives them by contrast an unusually swarthy appearance.
Returning, we had a view of the Rock of Trichinopoly with the old fort and temple on the summit. This syenite rock crops out in various places in this district, but not often rising much above the ground, but only emerging here and there from the earth in a manner rather suggestive of the backs of tortoises.
Saw a mongoose at the roadside which soon crept out of sight and hid in the low brushwood at our approach. Trichinopoly is well wooded, but is not particularly picturesque, though the scattered tiled or thatched bungalows look pretty enough in their gardens, but on the whole it gives one the impression of rather a straggling place. There was a deserted looking mission church with a few tombstones about it quite near our bungalow, trying to look like an English village church, but not succeeding. Leipzig Lutherans and Wesleyan Methodists are said to have “missions” here, as well as the Church of England. These missionaries seem to plant their stations wherever there are important Hindu temples. The wonder is that the natives are so tolerant.
Madura was our next destination, and we were not sorry to get away from our stifling little barn of a room at the bungalow, leaving in the early morning about daybreak for the 5.45 Madras mail.
The country was flat at first, with, again, large sheets of water along the sides of the line, but as we passed from the Trichinopoly district to the Madura district we entered a mountainous region, thickly wooded. I noted many cedar trees, and a kind of cactus growing high with tall tree-like stem. It was an interesting and varied country the rest of the way. The crops were chiefly paddy and castor oil plant.
One station had the extraordinary name of Ammayanayakanur, and we were soon in the tobacco-growing district, passing Dindigul with a rock and an old fort upon it, not unlike Trichinopoly in character. Cigars of the district were offered at the station, but we saw no tobacco crops near the line.