THE SEVEN PAGODAS. 



207 



if the whole of the building had been at one time covered over 

 with it, and the same fact is to be noticed in many of the other 

 sculptures, &c, in the neighbourhood. At Eamesvaram, where 

 the great temple is much exposed to the salt sea air, one or more 

 restorations in plaster have been made. The carvings are too 

 good to let it appear that the plaster coating was part of the 

 original design. The great screen wall of the temple 

 was about 40 feet square besides the projection on 

 W the east side, thrown out to correspond with the 

 portico -projection of the main building, which it 

 probably at first was made or designed to surround completely. 

 In the left rear (west-north-west side) a smaller shrine was 

 built, a miniature copy of the larger 

 N one, open to the west, entirely outside 



the screen wall enclosure, and evi- 

 dently (to my mind) never intended 

 as an entrance to the latter. It has 



a small portico-projection of its own 

 surmounted by the usual domical 

 cell-ornaments and crowned by a bull conohant. Above the 

 shrine cell in the basement the roof rises pyramidally, with three 

 cornices and terraces between floor and dome. 



The (dvarapal) warders face one another in the entrance- 

 passage or portico, as in the Olakkannesvara temple No. 34. The 

 shrine cell is very small and contains on its back (or eastern) 

 wall a niche with a sculptured panel bearing the usual tableau 

 of Siva and Parvati, &c, already mentioned. 



It has four lamp niches cut in the western and the 

 side walls of the graceful pipal-leaf-shape common 

 here. 



It would appear that the small Vishnu cell was an addition 

 made by taking in or enclosing a chamber 

 in the corner between the south wall of 

 the smaller shrine and the west side of 

 the screen wall, a doorway in which was 

 made opening into it from a small ante- 

 chamber formed by two cross walls from 



