At rather a late hour the melancholy wife quitted the side of her husband, whose malady had not abated, and repaired to the magnificent temple of Somnat, at that time the most celebrated in Hindostan. It stood upon an elevated part of the town, and covered a vast space of ground. It was a ponderous edifice, exhibiting that elaborate detail of ornament combined with massive grandeur peculiar to the early Hindoo temples. Within, it consisted of one vast aisle several hundred feet long, the roof supported on either side by magnificent columns, ornamented even to superfluity with sculpture, each column detailing an episode from the Mahabarat. Every pillar was cut from a single block of granite, elaborated with an accuracy of touch, and a justness of proportion, not exceeded by any monuments of ancient art, save those of Greece. The light was admitted through a vast dome in the centre, beneath which the huge idol stood like a Colossus, casting one unvarying expression of grim insensibility upon its prostrate but humble adorers. The figure was of stone, clumsily wrought into a monstrous form. The head was ornamented with gems of prodigious value, similar gems being likewise fixed in every pillar of the temple. Its eyes were formed of two rubies of such transcendent lustre as to inspire the worshippers with a holy awe when they prostrated themselves before this hideous image. There were no lights used in the temple at night except one pendent lamp, the light of which being reflected from the jewels in the idol’s head, and from those fixed in the various columns that adorned the sacred edifice, spotted the whole area with a dazzling gleam which appeared the effect of superhuman agency.[2] The most costly offerings were daily made to this factitious divinity, but the depository of its immense wealth was a secret, as the Brahmins pretended, known only to the deity to whom it had been dedicated. On two sides of the temple were various apartments occupied by the functionaries of the sanctuary, which no persons were permitted to enter, save those to whose habitation they had been especially appropriated. Strange and mysterious events were said frequently to take place within those secret and forbidden retreats, supposed to be hallowed by the holy lives of their spiritual occupants. The Brahmin who had recently visited the invalid had an apartment near the shrine, and was one of the officiating priests in this fane of superstition, where, under the mask of religion, the most revolting abominations were nightly practised. Like the Eleusinian mysteries, they were hidden from the public eye, as only fit to be witnessed by those whom it would seem to have been thought that vice had sanctified.