GRANITE WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS.
and delicately finished; but probably never was intended
for locomotion.

The art of carving in granite has never been carried to
higher perfection than on the continent of India. At
Chillambaram, also in the Carnatic, and on the Coromandel
coast, is a congeries of temples, representing the sacred

Mount of Meru. Here are seven lofty walls, one within
the other, round the central quadrangle, and as many
pyramidal gateways in the midst of each side, which form
the limbs of a vast cross; consisting altogether of twenty-
eight pyramids. There are consequently fourteeen in a
line, which extends more than a mile in one continuous
direction! Nor are these the only wonders associated
with this metropolis of pyramids. The interior ornaments
are in harmony with the whole; from the nave of one of
the principal structures there hang, on the tops of four
buttresses, festoons of chains, in length about 548 feet.
Each garland, consisting of twenty links, is made of
one piece of granite sixty feet long; the links them-
selves are monstrous rings, thirty-two inches in cireum-
ference, and polished as smooth as glass.

Compared with the monolith temples of granite at Maha-
balipuram, which is likewise situated on the *Coromandel
coast, those in Egypt sink into insignificance. The
rocks thereabouts are composed of a hard grey granite,
containing quartz, mica, and felspar, with a few crystals
of hornblende interspersed. Many have been hollowed out
by art, and sculptured into temples with spirited bas-reliefs,
—representing episodes in Hindu history and mythology
—and supported by graceful columns; all carved from
the solid rock. Detached masses have been cut into
shapes of elephants, tigers, lions, bulls, cats, monkeys,
and various nondescript monsters, and colossal statues of
gods; one of which, namely that of Ganesa, being thirty
fect high. The southernmost of the temples is about
forty feet in height, twenty-seven feet in breadth, and
nearly the same inlength; the exterior being covered with
elaborate sculptures. The adjoining edifice is about
forty-nine feet in length, and in breadth twenty-five feet ;
it is rent by natural causes from summit to base. Accord-
ing to the local Brahminical tradition, these wonderful
sculptures were executed by 4000 workmen, who had
eome from the north, and returned before their completion.
From a careful examination, it is evident that almost all
the enormous mass of sculpture and carving that adorns
this city of monolith temples and colossi, must have been
performed without the aid of fire—with the hammer,
chisel, lever, and wedge alone: and this is one of the
hardest rocks in the world!

But the want of space prompts us to direct our atten-
tion elsewhere; and we turn naturally to Ultra-India, to
those territories beyond the Ganges—Assam, Burmah,
and Cambodia—where remains as extensive, magnificent,
and not improbably as ancient, as any on the Indian
continent are discovered; but whose origin, destination,
and destruction—in Cambodia more especially—are en-
veloped for the most part in hopeless obscurity. Both his-
tory and tradition are silent respecting them. In the first-
mentioned locality we may not linger beyond a moment or
so, deeply interesting as its many ruins are, from an archi-
tectural stand-point. There, again, the spite of the fanatical
Moslem has effected quite as much mischief and misery
as the convulsions of Nature. Earthquakes are more
frequent in Assam than in any other quarter of our
Indian possessions. By those two irresistible agencies

175

the greatest cities have been not only overthrown and
depopulated, but the more magnificent fragments (as in
Kashmir), and sometimes even the débris itself, of Hindu
temples and other equally beautiful edifices, laboriously
transported elsewhere, to construct, entirely or in part,

Mahomedan buildings, sacred and secular. Now
« All is still as night—
All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces,
Swept from the sight: and nothing visible
. . . Save here and there
An empty tomb, a fragment like a limb
Of some dismembered giant.”

“

In a few instances only has the hand of the Depredator
been stayed, and then by creatures hardly more savage
than himself. The gigantic ruins of Pord, in the heart
of Assam, and formerly the capital of the ancient and
extensive kingdom of Kamrip, are hidden in the depths
of a jungle, consisting of lofty trees entwined with
parasitical plants, and reed grass upwards of twenty feet
high, swarming with wild animals. An English officer
who recently visited this remote and dangerous spot,
thus describes one of its granite temples, so far as it was
possible for him, in the midst of such a heap of stupendous
ruins, to trace its lineaments :—“ It appears,” he says,
“to have faced the north, and to have been provided
with a portico, supported on three columns of sixteen
sides ; each shaft, not including the plinth and pedestal,
which stand four feet above the ground, measured eight
feet high, and five and a half in girth, and was wrought
from a single block of fine granite. The shafts have
sculptured capitals, while the surbases take the form of
an octagon, and the plinths are circular at top, and
spread into four feet, making a sort of cross that measured
four feet and three quarters each way. Three gigantic
stones, with the fragments of a fourth, each hewn from a
single block fourteen feet long, and cut into five irregular
sides, of which the total showed a circumference of eight
feet, seemed to have formed the entablature of the
entrance porch, which I judged to have been fifty-six
feet long. The frieze has three tiers of carving in bas-
relief, representing scrolls of flowers; the apertures, in
which iron rivets were introduced, can be distinctly
traced; and itis evident that no cement was employed
to unite the materials. The other members were too
much shattered and dispersed to enable me to conjecture
the form of the temple. From a great portion of the
surrounding works being in an unfinished state, it affords
the presumption that the architect must have met some
unlooked-for interruption; and that this and the other
buildings were overthrown at the same period by some
hostile power opposed to the propagation of Hinduism,
assisted perhaps subsequently by a convulsion of
nature.”

Till within the past year or two, our knowledge of the
interior of Cambodia was very limited indeed. Its very
name was only familiar to us in that of its product,
gamboge, which word is a corruption of Cambodia, the
port in the Gulf of Siam whence it is brought. The
natives designate their country Kamen ; which is a small
portion only of a once powerful kingdom, extending from
the Bay of Bengal on the west to the confines of China
on the north and east; or, in other words, it included the
several territories now known as Burmah, Siam, and
Cochin China. The principal architectural ruins of
Cambodia are concentrated in the province of Siemrdb,