History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c17.12

v1.c17.12

These colossal monoliths must have been dragged across the river-intercepted delta from the mountains a hundred miles off and their hard blue stone still bears witness to the fine chiselling of the Hindu Art of 900 to 1000 A. D. The queen of Heaven, a four-armed goddess, sits in calm majesty with an admirably cut elephant as her footstool. A muslin drapery falls in delicate curves to her feet and is fastened by a girdle at the waist. Her hair towers up in a cone of curls inter-woven with jewels with a single massive tress hanging down upon either shoulder. The Earth goddess sits with her infant son on the knee and like the other two consists of a colossal monolith eight feet high by four in breadth. She has four arms also and the little finger of her left hand proves that Hindu ladies of that remote period wore rings. She sits on a finely carved buffalo the artistic lines of whose head and muzzle are striking. A temple to her husband the Boar incarnation crowns a time-worn flight of stairs leading up from the river.