After breakfast the next morning we got a carriage (which was a considerable improvement both as to vehicle and horse to the one at Tanjore), and drove towards the fort, which stands conspicuously on a bold rock rising abruptly from the plain. Passing through the native bazaar we crossed over a long bridge, which spanned a very broad river thronged with bathers, and people washing clothes, and watering cattle, all busy in the stream which was quite shallow, not more than waist high. This bridge had been designed and built by an English engineer, somewhere in the forties. It was of red sandstone, and our driver pointed out a stone in the coping inscribed to certain English officers who served under Clive, and helped to lay “the foundations of the British Empire in India” in 1750–4.

At about two miles from Trichinopoly we came to the great Temple of Seringham. Thatched native huts, forming a sort of bazaar, led up to and were clustered about the great gates, which resembled the entrance to the Temple of Tanjore. The height of the gateways were very great in proportion to their width. The great pagodas piled over them were carved with the greatest richness and intricacy of detail, and covered with the figures of gods and imagery of all kinds, surmounted by the curious rounded long barrel-like cresting, which is so characteristic of Hindu temple-architecture. The sculptured or modelled work here was all coloured, but many of the figures were said to be in stucco.

I think we passed through three of these gateways before we reached the final one leading into the court, with a many columned pavilion in the centre, having a painted ceiling in which the Hindu gods figured. The great Temple of Seringham is sacred to Vishnu, whose image appears very frequently. Opposite to this central pavilion is a colonnade having a frieze of carved and coloured figures under a cresting, Vishnu being in the centre. This seemed to be the Hindu equivalent for a sculptured pediment. The effect of the thickly clustered columns of white-washed stone supporting this band of rich carving and colour was very striking, the sharp light and shade of noontide throwing the front into strong relief, and through the aisles formed by the columns we could see another lighted court beyond.

The main passage through was lined by the little stalls of a bazaar, grouped at the bases of the columns, where mementoes in the shape of small tin pictures heightened with coloured lacquer were stamped in relief with representations of Vishnu and his goddess, bead rosaries and necklaces, and jewellery were also sold, and little silk bags embroidered with portraits of the same deities.

As we stood facing the second court, the sacred elephant of the temple came up, his forehead bearing the mark of Vishnu, painted large in red and white. It was amusing to see the animal pick up a two-anna piece from the ground, and pass it over its head to its keeper and driver seated on its neck. Another younger and smaller elephant soon joined the other, and this one had beautiful tusks which his larger companion was without. This one, too, skilfully picked up the small coins in the same way, fumbling with the sensitive finger-like point of his trunk to get hold of them in the crannies of the pavement.

We then, passing across this second court, entered the Hall of a Thousand Columns—a sort of architectural forest. Before this is reached, however, there is a smaller hall which has a very remarkable range of carved columns—the most extraordinary carved stone work in Southern India. They are strictly speaking rather columnar brackets, bracketed columns or corbels resting on bases, and they represent warriors on horses spearing lions and tigers. The chief feature in each is the rearing horse, which with its rider and lance, and smaller figures below, and the attacking tiger, or, sometimes, elephant, form a connected group cut out of a single block of stone. These sculptures have so barbaric and antique an appearance that it seems surprising they should only date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries together with the whole of the temple buildings.

A curious effect is given to the interior of some of the temples here by the practice of whitewashing the pillars and walls, and leaving the carved figures untouched in the stone, which gives them by contrast an unusually swarthy appearance.

Returning, we had a view of the Rock of Trichinopoly with the old fort and temple on the summit. This syenite rock crops out in various places in this district, but not often rising much above the ground, but only emerging here and there from the earth in a manner rather suggestive of the backs of tortoises.

Saw a mongoose at the roadside which soon crept out of sight and hid in the low brushwood at our approach. Trichinopoly is well wooded, but is not particularly picturesque, though the scattered tiled or thatched bungalows look pretty enough in their gardens, but on the whole it gives one the impression of rather a straggling place. There was a deserted looking mission church with a few tombstones about it quite near our bungalow, trying to look like an English village church, but not succeeding. Leipzig Lutherans and Wesleyan Methodists are said to have “missions” here, as well as the Church of England. These missionaries seem to plant their stations wherever there are important Hindu temples. The wonder is that the natives are so tolerant.

Madura was our next destination, and we were not sorry to get away from our stifling little barn of a room at the bungalow, leaving in the early morning about daybreak for the 5.45 Madras mail.

The country was flat at first, with, again, large sheets of water along the sides of the line, but as we passed from the Trichinopoly district to the Madura district we entered a mountainous region, thickly wooded. I noted many cedar trees, and a kind of cactus growing high with tall tree-like stem. It was an interesting and varied country the rest of the way. The crops were chiefly paddy and castor oil plant.

One station had the extraordinary name of Ammayanayakanur, and we were soon in the tobacco-growing district, passing Dindigul with a rock and an old fort upon it, not unlike Trichinopoly in character. Cigars of the district were offered at the station, but we saw no tobacco crops near the line.

We reached Madura about noon, in time for tiffin, and engaged a room at the station, which was a great improvement as to beds and general appointments on our recent bungalow experiences. The sleeping-rooms were built out on a separate wing which appeared to be new. They opened on to a corridor which led to a large open terrace, and were in charge of a Eurasian woman. There was also a good dining-room at the station.

It was tremendously hot, however, and we could not very well move out until after 4 o’clock, when having engaged a guide we drove out to see the great temple. Our bearer objected strongly to the guide and there was some friction between them, but as native servants were prohibited from entering the temples, and were always stopped at the gates, Moonsawmy could not show cause why the guide was not necessary, and we found him very intelligent, speaking English well, and having the history of the place at his fingers’ ends.

The Madura temple is so remarkable and is on such a scale that I was anxious to get all the information about it I could. Mr Pillai (the guide) was very useful and well-informed, and he gave us many interesting stories and details about the sculptured figures and paintings.

There are four great pagoda-gates, richly carved and painted, of the same type but larger than those at Tanjore and Trichinopoly. Evidently the Hindus had no scruples about colouring their sculpture, and the colouring has been renewed from time to time. The prevailing tints used are turquoise blue, vermilion, yellow, white, and green. One of the gates the guide pointed out was granite up to the first story, and the figures were in stucco above.

The four gates mentioned are connected by a high wall, on the crest of which occur at intervals the image of Siva (to whom the temple is dedicated) seated between two bulls, the bulls being placed upon the top of the wall, and the image of the God in a sort of arched recess, sunk into it a little below. The upper part of the wall is uncoloured, but a sort of high dado is carried along it below, painted in broad vertical stripes of red and white which seems a favourite scheme of decoration in Southern India. The wall encloses a broad paved court, and inside this is another wall with gates, through which the various temples and columned halls are entered.

In the centre of all is the sacred tank, a large pool of water surrounded by steps, and an arcade of white columns. As we approached this, we saw a crowd of natives, men and women, seated on the paved margin of the tank along one side and between the columns listening to a priest who was preaching with much earnestness. Our guide said he was translating or expounding (one did not know with what gloss) passages from the sanskrit text of the sacred books which another priest previously read in the original.

The scene was a picturesque one. The various colours of the people’s dresses, in which dark red prevailed, showed against the white wall and columns, and the brown faces made a harmonious scheme of colour.

The wall along the upper part was painted with a series of histories of Siva and his incarnations. These picture-stories were arranged in tiers or friezes, about four or five deep, one above the other, and running the entire length of the wall behind the colonade, each side the tank. These paintings were highly interesting, painted probably with the main object of making the stories intelligible to the people, they were quite decorative, full of detail, and forming a rather closely filled and dark pattern of colour, having the effect of a woven hanging.

One of the painted legends treated of a certain Maharajah who appears to have persecuted the early Jain seceders, much as the Roman emperor treated the early Christians, with great ferocity, finally impaling them on stakes, and thus they were painted all of a row!

The Jain sect was at first apparently regarded as a schism, and the Jains as heretics or apostates falling away from the pure Hindu worship of Siva.

One seems here, in this great Temple of Madura, to get back to the most ancient type of religion, and one which, after all, allowing for evolution in our ideas, seems the most lasting—Nature worship. The Hindus in their pantheon include and embrace everything, at least in their own universe, which is their own country, and to them, truly, “nothing is common or unclean.” Their deities incarnate themselves in all sorts of forms. Siva, according to one legend, for instance, even taking the form of a wild sow, and suckling the young of the mother which had been slain by the hunters. The second son of Siva rides upon a peacock, the representative bird of India. The Zebu bull is sacred to Siva, and in the Lingam is symbolised and revered the male and female principle of generation, the root and source of all life on the earth.

In one place in the temple, between two of the columns, was a group of the nine planets personified and placed around the sun—a golden sphere in the centre. For each of these embodied planets might be found a corresponding personality among the deities of the classical world.

Another striking thing about the Madura temple is the force of realization and expression in the figure sculpture. Life-sized figures of different gods and demons are carved in stone in front of the columns in many of the halls of the temple, the columns themselves frequently white-washed, while the figures are left in the untouched stone and look in contrast like bronze figures, their elaborate detail and undercutting emphasizing this suggestion. Indeed, the variety of character, invention, as well as the vigour and freedom, governed by a certain formalism, of some of this sculpture at its best reminds one of European gothic sculpture in the Middle Ages, not only in its symbolical and legendary aspect, but also its all embracing character and sympathy with the life of the people. The type of the Hindu mother appears, for instance, in one of the best of the figures carrying her child on her hip, just as the native women do to this day, while a suckling infant is suspended at her breast.

Mockery, if not humour, too, seems to come out here and there sometimes, as in the dancing figure of a mocking musician playing on his pipes.

A frequent subject is Siva presenting his sister in marriage to Vishnu, and there are besides a number of curious legends connected with the sculptures here, which are very various, and, of course, not unfrequently become grotesque or monstrous under the influence of the Hindu religious symbolic ideas and the Hindu inventiveness; but one feels that here is a genuine piece of ancient life, expressed in the forms of Hindu art—frank nature worship in full vigour of life, and a dominant influence in the lives of millions of people.

In the sacred tank the people were constantly bathing and washing their clothes. The water never seems to be changed and is perfectly green in colour. Our guide said it remained pure and ordered a man to show its quality by dipping his hands in and holding a small quantity in them, cupwise. The water, however, was, even in this small quantity, quite green, although a clear green. It must have been full of vegetable matter, one would think. It reminded us of what the Maharajah’s secretary had said of the Ganges water at Benares.

The colouring of the interior of the Temple in parts recalled the mural decoration of ancient Egypt in its use of simple primary colours—red, green, white, and yellow prevailing. The lotus flower, too, was constantly introduced, treated as a rosette upon the ceilings.

Some of the pillared halls were, however, left in plain stonework, or simply whitewashed. One long hall we entered looked very impressive in the dim light, a single ray from the sun penetrating, and making a spot of intense light upon the floor.

We saw a gilded copper dome, and a golden flag staff, and our guide pointed out the great doors behind which the festival cars were kept, and we saw, too, wonderfully decorated life-sized images of elephants and horses which formed part of the show on great occasions. There were two black and two white elephants, standing between the columns, under rather tawdry and tinselly canopies, and other furniture of the festivals; one large hanging bearing the words of welcome to the Prince and Princess of Wales, which must have been used for the occasion of their visit.

Various donors of parts of the temple were pointed out, in effigy. The Czar of Russia appeared (not however in person) as the donor of certain shrines and a brass canopy or arch which held many lamps.

The practice of drawing the image of the god on festival days through the streets on great cars seems general at all the chief temples in Southern India, and not confined to Juggernath. At Seringham we saw the great car on which the image of Siva was drawn on such occasions, and also the thick cables—like ship’s cables—which were used for the purpose—multitudes of men hauling the car out of the temple and along the streets by these means. Here, too, at Madura the god Siva is represented seated upon his car which is treated as a kind of throne, the wheels and the horses sculptured at the sides in a symbolic sort of way.

In some of the painted histories on the walls, Siva is shown in a winged car (suggesting his rapid flight and omnipresence, perhaps) and, presumably, his image is drawn out on a car at festivals to keep his presence and moving influence vividly in the minds of his worshippers.

It was curious to see the bazaars in the corridors and outer courts of the temple. Rows of stalls, where all sorts of miscellaneous things were sold—brass ware, pottery, woven stuffs, beads, and all kinds of knick-knacks and toys. Some of the sellers squat on the pavement and spread out their goods before them. The temple and its courts is a great resort of the people, in fact. Pilgrims lie down and sleep near its shrines, and the children play freely between its pillars. Bats flutter in and out of the crevices of the ceilings, or hang in little black clusters up aloft in their recesses.

In sketching at the sacred tank a very large crowd of natives gradually collected behind me, and on each side, and it was as much as the guide could do to keep them from closing in, and completely surrounding me. Some American visitors to the temple whom we met afterwards in Ceylon said that, seeing this vast concourse pressing round the tank, they thought it was a suicide! Travellers usually take snap-shots with hand cameras, and I imagine that a sketcher in colours is comparatively rare. The crowd, however, were quite quiet. The guide was encouraging, and remarked when I had finished that it was “better than a photograph.”

Another afternoon we drove out through the city and some three miles beyond to see the “Teppa Tank”—a large sheet of water, enclosed by a low wall painted in red and white stripes, with steps to the water and carved bulls decorating the balustrades. On an island in the centre of the tank rose the pagoda of a temple, in stucco, and four small pagodas at the four corners of the garden-island—a mass of foliage amid which the pagodas shone, ivory-white in the sunshine.

Near this tank on the roadside was another temple sacred to a goddess who was the object of solicitude in the case of people desiring offspring, and to whom votive offerings of cradles were made by the devotees, as well as doll-like images of children made of baked clay and painted. The flat roof of this temple was peopled with a crowd of these grotesque images, and the carriage boy was sent to fetch one for our inspection.

Then we drove on to where grew a gigantic Banyan tree—eighty feet in girth, and having quite a small forest around its central vast trunk of offshoots—new trees which had rooted themselves in the earth from the parent branches. It was rather suggestive of a many pillared sylvan temple.

After this we reached the Palace of Tiramala, which stood at the head of a large village—an imposing structure in stucco, mostly yellow washed. The enormous columns of the court looked out of proportion to the arches they supported, which were of a rather debased Mogul type, heavy with very elaborate grotesque ornamentation in stucco in the spandrils and on the ceilings, many of which had as a central device a large lotus flower formally treated as a rosette, and in some instances elaborately painted. The effect of the whole building was rather weird, and suggested a rather queer architectural nightmare, in which massive Norman cathedral piers had swallowed Roman Doric ones, or vice versa, and a Hindu modeller had broken up some Mogul arches, and fastened them together again with grotesque elephants and dragons’ teeth.

The palace was now used as law courts, and it was curious to see two modern oil portraits of two neat English lawyers hanging on the walls of these vast columned halls.

We next visited a native shop in the village bazaar where the fine muslins and silks of the district were made and sold. We were duly seated in chairs and fanned by boys, while an active brown member of the firm unfolded tempting saris, pugarees, and silk stuffs, some beautifully brocaded with gold thread, and of course we possessed ourselves of a few specimens.

In this district there is a thriving native silk industry, hand-weaving, also dyeing, and the ingenious native craft of making patterns on cottons and muslins by tying and dipping. Hanks of cotton and silk may be seen hung out over bamboo poles placed horizontally, and ox-carts roll by filled with the dyed skeins. There is a fine dark rich red, frequently seen in the sari dress of the women, also a dark purple. The women here generally wear the dark red sari with a narrow border of black; in some cases the sari is black with a red border.

In the village street we saw a little native bride drawn in a carriage.

Returning to the city in the cool of the evening we stopped at the temple bazaar and bought some zebu bells—curious little pear-shaped brass bells, each with a different tone, which are hung round the animals’ necks. Their foreheads, too, are frequently bound with strings of beads, or shells fixed on leather bands, and their horns are painted green or red.

There is a method of decorating the centres of the dining tables in Southern India which, I think, we first noticed at the hotel at Madras, or at one of the refreshment stations on the Coromandel coast. It consists in arranging dyed sago seeds in patterns forming a table centre on the white cloth. At the station refreshment room at Madura there was a more elaborate example done by means of stencils—a border of yellow enclosed a lightly powdered filling, and an effective outer border was produced by a repeated sprig of a red rose with green leaves. The general effect was that of an embroidered pattern, but of course it was liable to slight displacements, and was constantly done afresh, one of the waiters being the special artist.

We left Madura on the 15th of February for Tuticorin.

The country traversed was flat and plain for the most part, with cultivated crops of castor oil plants, paddy, and corn, alternating with jungle of brushwood, but no fine trees. Hills were seen in the distance on the right, and we made several stoppages at short places with very long names.

Arriving at Tuticorin about four in the afternoon, we went on to the beach station, and got on board a small steam launch or tug in waiting at the jetty, then we saw the last quarter, as it were, of our Moonsawmy, and took our leave of him, after he had had his usual fierce dispute with the coolies, who certainly never received trade union wages from him. On the whole we were not sorry to get away from the rupee-hunting throng which usually hang about stations and wharves—the kites and crows in pursuit of the traveller, their prey, who for the time being, at least, now escaped their clutches.

Tuticorin presented no obvious attractions except the sea, which we were quite glad to meet again. The launch seemed just large enough to hold the train-load of passengers—Americans, Germans, and English with their baggage, and after about half-an-hour’s steam across the harbour we reached the steamer (the “Pandua” of Glasgow) and climbed up the gangway to the saloon deck. We secured a rather small but well-appointed berth opening off the saloon, and were able to enjoy a well-served dinner—food seems generally better on ship-board than on land—at least Indian land. Cargo boats were clinging to the steamer’s side, and, at sunset, one by one cast off and hoisted their lateen sails (like those of an Arab dhow) each boat having one about the length of the vessel. The sailors in hoisting up the sail climbed and clung to the rope, to bring it up with their weight. Chanting a curious sort of song the while, our steamer weighed anchor and started, and we looked astern and saw the last of India fading from view behind the shining wake of the steamer, and lost in the glow of an orange sunset.