material in both is the hardest granite. The façade of this hall, like that of almost all the great halls in the south of India, is adorned either with Yalis--monsters of the lion type trampling on an elephant--or, even more generally, by a group consisting of a warrior sitting on a rearing horse, whose feet are supported on the shields of foot soldiers, sometimes slaying men, sometimes tigers. These groups are found literally in hundreds in southern India, and, as works exhibiting difficulties overcome by patient labour, they are unrivalled, so far as I know, by anything found elsewhere. As works of art, they are the most barbarous, it may be said the most [Illustration: 204. View in Tirumulla Nayak’s Choultrie, Mádura. (From a Photograph.)] vulgar, to be found in India, and do more to shake one’s faith in the civilization of the people who produced them than anything they did in any other department of art. Where these monstrosities are not introduced, the pillars of entrances are only enriched a little more than those of the interior, when the ornamentation is in better taste, and generally quite sufficiently rich for its purpose. Immediately in front of his choultrie, Tirumulla Nayak commenced a gopura, which, had he lived to complete it, would probably have been the finest edifice of its class in southern India. It measures 174 ft. from north to south, and 107[390] ft. in depth. The entrance through it is 21 ft. 9 in. wide; and if it be true that its gateposts are 60 ft. (Tripe says 57 ft.) in height, that would have been the height of the opening.[391] It will thus be seen that it was designed on even a larger scale than that at Seringham, described above, and it certainly far surpasses that celebrated edifice in the beauty of its details. Its doorposts alone, whether 57 ft. or 60 ft. in height, are single blocks of granite, carved with the most exquisite scroll patterns of elaborate foliage, and all the other carvings are equally beautiful. Being unfinished, and consequently never consecrated, it has escaped whitewash, and alone, of all the buildings of Mádura, its beauties can still be admired in their original perfection. The great temple at Mádura is a larger and far more important building than the choultrie; but, somehow or other, it has not attracted the attention of travellers to the same extent that the latter has. No one has ever attempted to make a plan of it, or to describe it in such detail as would enable others to understand its peculiarities. It possesses, however, all the characteristics of a first-class Dravidian temple, and, as its date is perfectly well known, it forms a landmark of the utmost value in enabling us to fix the relative date of other temples.