fine chunam or stucco, and generally of a conical form. These monuments or altars, as they have been sometimes called, are often without ornament; frequently, however, they are very much enriched, and have generally on the top a member which spreads a little, so as to form a kind of umbrella, which you know is, in the East, the ensign of dignity.

The great caverns both at Canara, in Salsette, and at Carli, are supported by polygonal pillars, with peculiar bases and capitals, possessing considerable dignity and solidity, though they are far behind the Greek columns in elegance. I send you some sketches of specimens of these, and also of some which supported the entrances to some of those smaller caves which I take to have been dwellinghouses. At Carli, these dwellinghouses are in different stories, in the perpendicular face of the rock, and communicating with each other by stairs within, while the outside only presents here and there a window, or a colonnade. At Canara, the dwellings enter from without; before each door there is usually a reservoir, and in most of them I found excellent water. The communication between distant parts of the mountain is facilitated by winding paths, or steps hewn in the rock; and on the summit there are larger reservoirs and baths, which were probably in

common. The hewing of all these is extremely skilful, and marks a knowledge of the sciences and arts connected with architecture, of no or dinary degree. The construction of arches, alone, is a proof of the great progress of the Hindûs in the arts which tend so materially to the comfort and embellishment of society; and the buildings erected for astronomical purposes, of which the ruins still remain, are a farther evidence of their skill and ingenuity.

The religious buildings of the Hindus probably partook originally of that grandeur and simplicity so remarkable in the cavern temples; but that they very early adopted a style of excessive ornament is evident from the pagodas, as the English choose erroneously to call them, hewn out of the rock at Ellora and at Mahvellepoor, or the Seven Pagodas. Every moulding, every angle, is adorned with grotesque heads or images, or pinnacles, extremely enriched with pilasters, and what we should call corbels, supporting them. The roofs of the buildings are oblong, they are generally covered with a moulding, along the to pof which is placed a row of vases, or if square, they terminate in a kind of dome, ribbed on the outside with an ornament not unlike the Gothic crockets. The interstices between the ornaments of the sides of the temples, are generally filled up with sculptures re