It is curious, that the figures of Bhud, whether on the continent of India, or the island of Ceylon, or in China, should present the form, and curled woolly hair of a Southern African. But the Bhuddhists of India do not appear to have produced better works, in sculpture, than those of China. The Brahmins, on the contrary, have left, besides magnificent architectural monuments, in their caverns, in which they are rivalled by the Bhuddhists, pieces of sculpture, of a very different character from theirs, where there is occasionally grandeur, and, not unfrequently, freedom and grace. No one, who has seen the colossal head of the Trimurti, in Elephanta, can deny the grandeur, almost the sublimity, of that strange work; and the compartments of the same temple-cavern are examples of a gracious feeling of nature. The sculptured rock, at Mavellipoor, or Mahabalipoor, called the Tapas, or Penance of Arjoon, is a further example of freedom and taste; and the figures of the elephants, and other animals, attendant on the holy penitent, are designed with the greatest truth. The deformities, almost constant in Egypt, of placing the heads of animals on men’s shoulders, because the qualities of those animals were figurative of the attributes of the deities, are added to by the Hindoos, who, regarding the human hand as the symbol of power, have accordingly multiplied the hands of the gods. I shewed the late Mr. Flaxman some drawings of the sculptured rocks of Mahabalipoor: he was struck with the freedom and expression of several of the figures, in which there was an evident attempt to imitate nature, and especially he was pleased with the expression of the courtiers of Bali, in the design of the Vamuna Avater. I must observe that at Mavellipoor, within a circuit of less than two miles, there are, besides the ruins of several large temples, built of hewn stone, eight Monothelite temples: small[11], but all differing in form, richly and capriciously ornamented; several caverns, on the walls of which there are many mythological subjects carved in high relief, some of the figures being seven feet high; and the sculptured rock of Arjoon, which I have already mentioned. Yet, in most of these works, the execution is coarse, as if the material had been too stubborn for the tools of the workman. I am told that this defect does not exist in some other of the cavern temples of India, but it runs through all that I have seen. Of the painting of the Hindoos, no specimen of anything like ancient times has been preserved[12]; though, from their undoubtedly ancient poems and plays, it is certain that they did paint, and that their pictures were not only single portraits, but compositions, both of what we call history and familiar life[13].