History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c17.13

v1.c17.13

"The most striking, however, of the three monoliths is the wife of the all-Destroyer—a colossal naked skeleton with the skin hanging to the bones and the veins and muscles standing out in ghastly fidelity. This appalling symbol of human decay has her hair brushed back under a snake fillet, with a death's head over the forehead and the distended hood of the cobra as a canopy above. Her serpent tresses fall down in twisted horror over her cheeks. An endless string of skulls winds round her neck, her breast, her loins and her whole body. She sits upon a small figure of her husband and the whole rests upon a lotus-leafed pedestal." Figures of the seven mothers and another statue of the goddess of destruction with the demons Sumbha and Nisumbha thrown down at her feet adorn a beautiful gallery carved on this very bank (H. O. Vol. 1 268-269). These and other sculptures testify to the great skill of Hindu workers during the Kesari rule in Orissa and bear witness to the great imagination of these sculptors and the mechanical skill of ancient engineers who could transport such big stones a hundred miles in those days before the introduction of modern mechanical appliances.