If we do not know all we would wish about the antiquities of Mahavellipore, it is not because attempts have not been made to supply the information. Situated on an open sea-beach, within one night’s easy dâk from Madras, it has been more visited and oftener described than any other place in India. The first volume of the ‘Asiatic Researches’ (1788) contained an exhaustive paper on them by W. Chambers. This was followed in the fifth (1798) by another by Mr. Goldingham. In the second volume of the ‘Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society’ there appeared what was then considered a most successful attempt to decipher the inscriptions there, by Dr. Guy Babington, accompanied by views of most of the sculptures. The ‘Madras Journal,’ in 1844, contained a guide to the place by Lieutenant Braddock, with notes by the Rev. W. Taylor and Sir Walter Elliot; and almost every journal of every traveller in these parts contains some hint regarding them, or some attempt to describe and explain their peculiarities or beauties. Most of these were collected in a volume in 1869 by a Lieutenant Carr, and published at the expense of the Madras Government, but unfortunately the editor selected had no general knowledge of the subject, nor had he apparently any local familiarity with the place. His work in consequence adds little to our previous stores. In addition to all this, Colonel Mackenzie undertook to illustrate the place, and employed his staff to make detailed drawings of all the sculptures and architectural details, and a volume containing thirty-seven drawings of the place is in his collection in the India Office, and Daniell has also published some faithful representations of the place. Quite recently it has been surveyed by the revenue surveyors, and photographed by Dr. Hunter, Captain Lyon, and others, so that the materials seem ample; but the fact is, they have been collected at such distant times, and by individuals differing so essentially in capability or instruction, that it is almost impossible, except on the spot, to co-ordinate the whole. Any accomplished architect or archæologist could do it easily in a month, and tell us the whole story. Meanwhile, however, the main features seem tolerably distinct, and ascertained within limits sufficient for our present purposes. The oldest and most interesting group of monuments at Mahavellipore, are the so-called five raths or monolithic temples standing on the sea-shore--one of these, that with the apsidal termination in the centre of the annexed woodcut (No. 181), stands a little detached from the rest. The other four stand in a line north and south, and look as if they had been carved out of a single stone or rock, which originally, if that were so, must have been between 85 ft. and 40 ft. high at its southern end, sinking to half that height at its northern extremity, and its width diminishing in a like proportion.