The materials for fixing the age of this rath are, first, the palæographical form of the characters used in the numerous inscriptions with which it is covered.[360] Comparing these with Prinsep’s alphabets, allowing for difference of locality, they seem certainly to be anterior to the 7th century.[361] The language, too, is Sanscrit, while all the Chola inscriptions of the 10th and subsequent centuries are in Tamil, and in very much more modern characters.[362] Another proof of antiquity is the character of the sculpture. We have on this rath most of the Hindu Pantheon, such as Brahma and Vishnu; Siva too appears in most of his characters, but all in forms more subdued than are to be found elsewhere. The one extravagance is that the gods generally have four arms--never more--to distinguish them from mortals; but none of these combinations or extravagances we find in the caves here, or at Ellora or Elephanta. It is the soberest and most reasonable version of the Hindu Pantheon yet discovered, and consequently one of the most interesting, as well, probably, as the earliest. None of the inscriptions on the raths have dates, but from the mention of the Pallavas in connexion with this place, I see no reason for doubting the inference drawn by Sir Walter Elliot from their inscriptions--“that the excavations could not well have been made later than the 6th century.”[363] Add to all this, that these raths are certainly very like Buddhist buildings, as we learn to know them from the early caves, and it seems hardly to admit of doubt that we have here petrifactions of the last forms of Buddhist architecture,[364] and of the first forms of that of the Dravidians. The want of interiors in these raths makes it sometimes difficult to make this so clear as it might be. We cannot, for instance, tell whether the apsidal rath in the centre of woodcut No. 181 was meant to reproduce a chaitya hall, or a vihara like that of woodcut No. 48. From its being in several storeys I would infer the latter, but the whole is so conventionalised by transplantation to the south, and by the different uses to which they are applied for the purposes of a different religion, that we must not stretch analogies too far.[365] [Illustration: 182. Arjuna’s Rath, Mahavellipore. (From a Photograph.)] There is one other rath, at some distance from the others, called Arjuna’s rath, represented in the above woodcut (No. 182), which, strange to say, is finished, or nearly so, and gives a fair idea of the form these oblong temples took before we have any structural buildings [Illustration: 183. Perumal Pagoda, Mádura. (From a MS. Drawing in the possession of the late General Monteith, Madras Engineers.) No scale.]