SCULPTURED ROCKS. 
29 
About a quarter of a mile from the beach at Maha- 
balipuram are some very curiously sculptured rocks,, 
exhibiting specimens of art absolutely astonishing, 
even in this age of fastidious refinement. The im- 
press of true genius is really stamped upon them in 
a most marvellous degree, especially when we con- 
sider the remote era to which they belong. Many 
interesting particulars respecting the ancient Hindoos 
may be collected from the fine basso-relievos, with 
which these rocks are literally covered. The dress of 
the women, represented on them, is much the same 
as that now so common on the coast of Malabar, 
where the lovely Hindoo, as perfect in form as the 
finest antique, goes uncovered to the waist. The 
men are exhibited as wearing turbans scarcely dif- 
fering in form from those now worn, and the women 
as having large pendants in their ears, with bangles on 
their hands and feet, thus proving the great anti- 
quity of the costume so strictly observed by the 
modern Hindoo. The pyramidal arrangement of the 
however learned, wise, or good, so short a time resident in India, 
and moreover precluded by his pastoral office from a very 
minute observation of tropical phenomena, is not to be strictly 
relied on, more especially, too, as the memoranda of his journal 
were hastily put together, are frequently nothing more than mere 
hints for future and weightier investigation, and were never in- 
tended, in their present shape, to meet the public eye. The mis- 
takes into which Bishop Heber has naturally fallen, from his 
inexperience of many of the subjects upon which he touches, and 
which a more intimate acquaintance with them would have 
enabled him to correct, causes the Anglo-Indian reader to regret 
that his journal was ever published; it is full of inaccuracies, 
and is often very foolishly quoted as an authority where it is 
least to be relied on. 
