200 



DESCRIPTIVE REMARKS ON 



letters engraved above by way of explanatory superscription. 

 The angle blocks with their niches are quite plain and devoid 

 of ornament, even more so than those of the little northernmost 

 shrine called Draupadi's Hatha. All the images or alto-reliei 

 sculptured figures of these monolithic Eathas are more or less 

 alike in style. 



The basement story or ground floor is crowned by a continuous 

 projecting cornice all round, in the usual style, ornamented with 

 vertical horse-shoe dormer facets, each containing a face 

 and between each pair of them is a gargoyle waterspout, of 

 very realistic human shape, mostly broken. 



There is a string course of elephants and lions (yali ?) all round 

 the basement below floor level. 



Immediately above the cornice there is the usual row of 

 (simulated) dormer cells joined by a 

 [ : {XjTnj = u^ covered passage and ornamented much 



as usual. There is a string course at base 

 of the cells of small rectangular blocks and cavities that gives 

 the idea of a row of crosses. Except in the lower front row of 

 cells over the projecting portico, the covered passages or corridors 

 between the cells are not in this instance adorned with transverse 

 upper-storey dormers as those of the adjoining (Bhima's) Hatha 

 are. Over the projecting portico of Nakula's Eatha, over that of 

 the Sahadeva or the apsidal Eatha, and of Kamaraja's temple 

 there is a minor row of cells besides the principal row continuous 

 with those of the other sides of the shrine. Here there is only 

 one row, that over the projecting portico, which is continuous 

 with the row of cells on the north and south faces. The inner 

 row has been omitted from the space inside the projecting 

 portico row, apparently to make room for the service of the 

 shrine excavated in the centre of the west side on this floor. 



This arrangement has been carried out also in the next storey 

 above, recalling the line of projecting shrines or hooded niches 

 to be seen in the centre of the side of big Indian temples over the 

 chief shrine entrance below, usually on the east side. On the 

 north, east and south sides the first or lowest terrace of the roof 



