WILD LIFE ACROSS THE WORLD 



From an historical point of view Southern India 

 is intensely interesting. All the famous names 

 associated with the real conquest of India come back 

 to you as your train stops at Trichinopoli or Tan j ore. 

 The former, with its temple and fort on top of the huge 

 bare rock, is a place to see, though hardly a place to 

 stay in for long. Tan j ore has its temple and its world- 

 famous stone bull ; but Madura, where I first broke 

 my journey, is really the show-place of the South. 



Madura is to Southern India what Benares is to 

 the North, the great religious centre. My guide, 

 a most voluble Hindu of between fifty and sixty, who 

 proudly showed me an autograph album containing 

 the signatures of half the most famous travellers and 

 Oriental scholars of modern times, told me how many 

 million pilgrims a year visited the Great Temple of 

 Madura. I forget the gigantic figures now, but they 

 reminded me of those of an Oil King's income tax. 



The temple itself is amazing. For the most part 

 it consists of open courts, or at least that was the 

 impression I gained. At the corners are immense 

 " goporams," tapering, quadrangular towers, covered 

 from top to bottom with hundreds of grotesque and 

 highly-coloured images. The whole note of the place 

 is one of grotesque futility — that is, if you try to 

 examine it in detail. But if you take it as a whole, you 

 must be impressed, both by its size and the thought of 

 its vast importance to untold millions of people 



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