BENARES. 
91 
once, and in the same temple, an object of praise and 
of expostulation, for the Hindoos do not scruple to 
speak their displeasure with any of their deities save 
Brahma. In the adoration of Genesa, the God of 
Wisdom, there is no apparent want of decency ; he is 
always addressed as “ that God upon whose glorious 
forehead the new moon is painted with the froth of 
Ganga” (the Ganges), and is generally represented sit- 
ting cross-legged, with four arms and hands, and hav- 
ing the head and proboscis of an elephant. His temples 
are profusely ornamented with carvings and paintings 
of the different limbs of this animals but most fre- 
quently of the head, repetitions of which often form 
the ornamental designs of the cornices and pillars. At 
Mhow, in the province of Allahabad, I remember to 
have seen a small temple of this god, in which all the 
columns supporting the building are made to represent 
the hind legs of the elephant, and the top of the roof 
within is adorned with an imitation of the tusks meet- 
ing round the proboscises, which depend from the 
centre, partly of stone, and partly of wood. 
The annexed plate represents the interior of one ot 
the temples of Genesa at Benares, where all the capi- 
tals of the pillars are wrought into monstrous heads 
of a gigantic size, carved in red sandstone, of which 
material the entire temple is constructed. All the 
ornaments have been greatly defaced, and the principal 
image of the god himself has evidently been the chief 
object of mutilation. The odium of these dilapida- 
