THE SEVEN PAGODAS. 



113 



As works of art these sculptures can hardly be assigned 

 a high rank. Compared with the Amaravati marbles they 

 are very coarse and rude, but perhaps not more so than the 

 difference of the material wrought. 



The rock here is the common quartzo-felspathic gneiss, 

 exceedingly brittle, hard, coarse and intractable, but gene- 

 rally less laminated and flakey than usual. 



We cannot however now tell for certain what the work 

 was like originally owing to the weathering of the surface, 

 and because it would seem that they were evidently at one 

 time, perhaps originally, covered by a thin coating of plaster 

 and paint or colour-wash. 



The Inscriptions (IV) are few but important, in so far 

 as they have afforded reliable palseographic evidence for 

 determining the date at which they were engraved, and the 

 purpose for which the temples were made. 



There is a Sanskrit inscription in characters of about the 

 sixth or seventh century (c. 700 A.D., Burnell), containing 

 a dedicatory invocation to Siva, on the wall of the small wag- 

 gon-roofed Ratha or monolithic temple (No. 24), parts of 

 which are also engraved on another Ratha, No. 43, and on 

 two of the rock-cut excavations, showing that some of the 

 caves and monoliths were existing together about 700 A.D. 



A single invocational verse in one of these partial tran- 

 scripts seems to describe or at least to allude unmistakeably 

 to the Siva tableau which is found so frequently in the shrine 

 cells here, both in the monoliths, caves and structural temples, 

 apparently intended as an altar-piece to accompany the linga, 

 and pointing to the similarity, in purpose and age, of the 

 latter (the structural temples) with those of the former (the 

 caves and monoliths). 



No inscription seems to have been found on the structural 

 temples, but they are by far the most ruinous of the remains 

 and most weather worn. If searched diligently, however, 



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