What the Indian artist’s conception of the form and appearance of Rama is, may be partially understood from the statuettes in stone made at the present day and frequently to be met with, at least in Northern India. They are usually sculptured in white marble, but painted (I may say enamelled) jet black, the only unblackened portion being the whites of the eyes. The eyebrows are gilded and so is the loin-cloth or _dhoty_, which is the only piece of clothing on the person of the god-man. Two big ornaments, shaped like stumpy reels, fill big holes in the lobes of the ears, and make them stick out on either side. On the forehead is the Vishnu caste-mark, the central line in red, and the two side lines, diverging from the top of the nose, in gold. These figures chiselled by the Indian sculptor are always stiff and somewhat conventional. The Dasahra festival of Northern India is replaced in Bengal by the Durga Puja, and consequently the Bengalees do not perform the Ram Lila; but I remember to have seen, years ago, in Bengal, a large collection of colossal groups of figures representing favourite incidents in the “Mahabharata” and “Ramayana,” prepared at the expense of the Maharajah of Burdwan, to which show, an annual one, I believe, the public were freely admitted. The grotesque forms of the monsters of the Indian epics were reproduced in huge clay statues, variously coloured and clothed. Some, armed with the strange weapons which the poets had imagined, were engaged in deadly combat. Gigantic arrows were conspicuous, and some of them, with the aid of thread supports, were shown in the air on their way to some ill-fated warrior or other. More peaceful scenes were also represented, as where Ravana, in the disguise of a Brahman, visits Sita in the forest. Various holy hermits were also there in all the repulsiveness of dirt and emaciation. The figures were coloured yellow, blue, green, brown, or black, according to the text of the poet, the conventional notions of the people, or the taste and fancy of the artists. Some of these clay statues were decidedly well modelled. They had real hair on their heads, faces and breasts; they were clothed in cotton fabrics, according to the not very elaborate fashions of the country, and, in some cases, were by no means unartistic representations of the men, demons and demigods of the sacred epics of India. APPENDIX +THE STORY OF THE DESCENT OF GANGA (THE GANGES), AS RELATED IN THE “RAMAYANA”+