168 



DESCRIPTIVE REMARKS ON 



appear to have just visited or taken shelter in the (? cave) dwell- 

 ing place of the cowherds. 



The two princes are of a gigantic size compared with the herds- 

 men, and they wear tall head-dresses covered with ornamental 

 plates or coronals. 



They wear earrings, necklace, armlets and bracelets, a waist- 

 cloth and the sacred thread, one of them a single and the other 

 a double thread. Both are unarmed and free from superhuman 

 limbs and divine or mythological emblems. Their women with 

 one exception appear nude, but with elaborate head-dresses and 

 ornaments. The common men and women of the place seem 

 to be clad in a waist-cloth and turband. 



The four front columns of this mandapa have the lion bases, 

 but they seem to have lost the central horn or nearly so. The 

 shaft including the lion base is nine diameters high, or ten 

 altogether including the bracket. Above the lions they are 

 16-sided for 3| diameters, then octagonal for a few niches and 

 square for about one diameter at top. There is no neck or 

 bulging capital, but merely a bracket (4 diameters long) between 

 the square top of the shaft and the architrave. In shape the 

 bracket much resembles the prevalent modern Dravidian pattern 

 with recurved drooping ends, and finished by a pretty pointed 

 drop or bud. 



The faces of the square head of the shaft and the bracket are 

 ornamented by rosettes, dwarfs, &c. 



The architrave is plainly moulded, and there is no cornice, 

 but this part of the design is evidently incomplete. 



With regard to the rock-cut sculptures here generally, and 

 especially with reference to the great bas-relief sculptures 

 exposed to the rain and the sea-breezes, it would be worth while 

 cleaning them all carefully and washing them over with an even 

 shade of a single colour throughout and otherwise to prepare 

 them for photography, as by a slight marking the outlines, &c. 



Such a course would probably cost very little and be of great 

 value in bringing out the details which are lost by the unequal 

 staining and weathering of the surface. 



