The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c7.37

c7.37

The image of the goddess Sarasvatī, in her temple at Gadag, is a very fair example (Fig. 3). Her clothing, it will be noticed, is very scant indeed, and reminds one of that of Tennyson's Vivien which more expressed than hid her and clung about her lissome limbs—a star veiled in grey vapour. But even the grey vapour has melted away from the circlet that engirdles Sarasvatī's waist to the pearls around her throat, and has condensed into sparkling dewdrops of costly jewelry which is just sufficient to save her from the suspicion of immodesty. From the waist downwards she is fully clothed, but with such a diaphanous material, woven in the looms of the gods, that, were it not for the delicate pattern of embroidery traced over it, it would be difficult to tell where it begins and where it ends. Her coiffure is an elaborate pile of curls, four of which, escaping from the rest, trail down