32 



Account of Mamallaipur. 



[No. 30. 



" consort of Siva, under which she is generally called Durga. 

 " She is sent against the usurper. She mounts her Lion, the 

 " gift of the mountain Himalya (snowy), and attacks the mon- 

 " ster, who shifts his form repeatedly : till at length the god- 

 (t dess planteth her foot upon his head, and cuts it off with a 

 " single stroke of her sword. Immediately the upper part of 

 " a human body issues through the neck of the headless buf- 

 " falo, and aims a stroke, which being warded off by the Lion 

 " with his right paw, Durga puts an end to the combat, by 

 " piercing him through the heart with a spear." The reader 

 will observe that the latter part of this story does not corres- 

 pond entirely with the sculpture just described, but this must 

 not surprise us, for the Hindu Poets, Sculptors, and Painters, 

 seem to claim the license of representing the same action in 

 a thousand different ways, and under a thousand different ver- 

 sions. 



I am tempted here to transcribe the following lines written 

 by Sir William Jones, in reference to this subject. 



" * 0 Durga ! thou hast deigned to shield 



" Man's cfeeble virtue with eel estial might, 

 " Gliding from yon jasper field ; 



" And on a Lion borne, hast braved the fight : 

 " For when the demon Vice thy realms defied, 



" And armed with death each golden horn ; 

 " Thy golden lance, O Goddess ! mountain born, 



" Touch'dbut the pest; — he roared and died." 



Marks of the workman's chisel may be seen on a large 

 block of granite, opposite the front of this excavation ; and 

 also at a few yards to the north-east of it, on a rough hewn 

 stone, intended for a bed, with an elevation at one end for a 

 pillow. The bed measures 10 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 9 inches : 

 the pillow is I feet broad and 12 inches high. There are two 

 small steps at the foot of the bed. 



* It is now almost universally admitted that Sir W. Jones sullied his great talent6 

 by writing hymns to Hindu gods. They all borrow scriptural or classical ideas, and 

 paint the personifications of India with colors not their own. The leading idea in these 

 lines is not Hindu, but European. W. T. 



