COLOSSAL STATUE. 
73 
We did not stay long in the Mysore, which is ge- 
nerally unhealthy ; but while we remained there, we 
took the opportunity of visiting the celebrated Jain 
statue near the village of Sravana Belgula, thirty- 
three miles north of Seringapatam. There is a small 
choultry close by the spot on which the figure stands, 
where our bearers rested with the palankeens while 
we proceeded to view this gigantic idol. It is an 
image of Gomuta Raya, the divinity of the Jains ; a 
sect differing in several particulars both from the Brah- 
minical and Buddhist forms of worship. This part 
of the Mysore was formerly the principal seat of the 
Jain sect, once so prevalent in the south of India; and 
the statue, which is still to be seen, is a remarkable 
memorial of the power possessed by them in this neigh- 
bourhood at that period. It stands seventy feet three 
inches from the summit of a huge pedestal, consisting 
of a hill of granite upwards of two hundred feet high. 
This stone divinity is composed of the same material 
as the pedestal, and is supposed to have originally 
formed the cone of the mountain, which the ingenious 
sculptor converted into an image, hewing away the 
lateral substance of the rocky hill, until the figure 
stood revealed to sight in all the majesty of size, 
though certainly not of symmetry. The statue, though 
formed, upon the whole, with tolerable exactness, is 
deficient in harmony of proportion. It is manifest to 
a very cursory glance, that the artist had by no 
means a profound knowledge of anatomy. The figure, 
nevertheless, is minutely defined in all its parts ; but, 
although elaborately wrought, there is an evident 
rudeness in the execution, from absence, not of labour. 
H 
