1 MATAN. 43
2 nificent temple, of a rectangular outline, seventy feet long, sixty
3 feet wide, and in its present ruined state about forty feet high. 6 vine, 1. sor.
4 The great thickness of the walls diminishes the interior space. The
5 whole character of the building, like that of the, inclosing colon-
6 nade, is massive, simple, and severe, yet in excellent taste. Some
7 notion of the style of architecture may be formed by ima-
8 gining a combination of the Egyptian, Tuscan, and Saxon..
9 The temple is at present roofless; Hiigel supposes it to have
10 been always so, and to have been left in an unfinished state.
11 He considers its plan to have been in some degree akin to that
12 of the cave temples at Ellora and other places. The ground
13 within and without is strewed with great quantities of vast blocks
14 of stone, which may have been displaced either by the violence of
15 earthquakes, which are frequent here, or by that of hostile super-
16 stition ; but the former may be regarded as the more probable.
17 There are a few mutilated and time-worn images and sculptures
18 in bas-relief, but nothing to determine with any approach to
19 certainty by whom the building was raised, or what was the period
20 and purport of its erection. The tradition of the Kashmirian
21 Pundits assigns it an antiquity of about two thousand five
22 hundred years. With them it bears the name Korau Pandau,
23 and is attributed to Kaura and Pandu,’ two kings who figure in? p.von Huge,
24 the remote legends of Hindoo mythology. It is also known by ¥##hmin ii. 408.
25 the name of the temple of Martund,®* or the Sun and Srina- 8 vigne, Kashmir,
26 gur,*t or the City of the Sun. Vigne! thinks that a resemblance } F aeieiatinl:
27 may be traced between this structure and the first temple of 248.
28 Jerusalem as described in scripture.? Hiigel3 supposes that it was ; : ince vi.
29 dedicated to the worship of the linga, and assigns the date of its ° Kaschmir, ti,
30 erection to the period intervening between the waning of Budd- ~
31 hism and the establishment of Brahminism. In common with
32 others who have visited these ruins, he regrets the weakness of
33 language to express the feelings to which they give rise. “ My 4 aya 4, 409, oe.
34 description unfortunately gives little conception of the impression
35 produced by this simple majestic structure, which I class amongst
36 the finest ruins of the world. ‘The forms are throughout noble,
37 and the embellishments often tasteful; but it is peculiarly cha-
38 racterized by the huge masses of which it is constructed, and the
39 effect of these is heightened by the dark hue of the marble, and
40 . wi jlo F Tt 4) yao sun, and 53 city.