mous accumulation of crimes, and the torrent of kindred blood through which he ascended the throne of India, might have been somewhat veiled by the historian, and ascribed to the perfidious and often sanguinary intrigues of Eastern courts; but this conduct in Aurengzeb, so different from the mild and lenient Akber, and the immediate descendants of that considerate and beneficent monarch, covers his name with everlasting infamy, and forbids his biographer to palliate his glaring and reiterated atrocities.

It was about the middle of the last century, and before the august temple of Benares was polluted by those lofty Mahommedan minarets, which, Mr. Hastings says, make it, at a distance, so conspicuous and attractive an object, that Tavernier travelled through a country which his pen has described in so entertaining a manner. His particular description of the Indian pagodas commences at the eighteenth chapter of the first book of his travels in India; and, as they are not numerous, I shall attend him in his visits to all those of note which he surveyed; and if the modern traveller in India should not find the description exactly consonant to the image which his recollection presents to his view, he will be candid enough to consider, that, at this day, near a century and a half have elapsed,

and that the country in which they are or were situated, has been, during that space, the theatre of constant wars, and the scene of successive devastations. I shall not, however, confine myself to Tavernier: Mandelsloe, before-cited, travelled still earlier through that country; and both Bernier and Thevenot occasionally deserve respectful notice.

These amazing structures are generally erected near the banks of the Ganges, Kistna, or other sacred rivers, for the benefit of ablution in the purifying stream. Where no river flows near the foot of the pagoda, there is invariably, in the front of it, a large tank, or reservoir of water. These are, for the most part, of a quadrangular form, are lined with freestone or marble, have steps regularly descending from the margin to the bottom, and Mr. Crauford observed many between three and four hundred feet in breadth.* * At the entrance of all the more considerable pagodas there is a portico, supported by rows of lofty columns, and ascended by a handsome flight of stone steps; sometimes, as in the instance of Tripetti, to the number of more than a

See Mr. Crauford's Sketches, vol. i. p. 106.

✦ See Voyage des Indes, tom. iii. p. 360. Edit. Rouen, 1713.

hundred. Under this portico, and in the courts that generally inclose the whole building, an innumerable multitude assembled at the rising of the sun, and, having bathed in the stream below, and, in conformity to an immemorial custom over all the East, having left their sandals on the border of the tank, impatiently await the unfolding of the gates by the ministering Brahmin. The gate of the pagoda universally fronts the east, to admit the ray of the solar orb, and opening presents to the view an edifice partitioned out, according to M. Theve not in his account of Chitanagar, in the manner of the ancient cave-temples of Elora, having a central nave, or body; a gallery ranging on each side; and, at the farther end, a sanctuary, or chapel of the deity adored, surrounded by a stone ballustrade to keep off the populace. * The reader for the present must check his curiosity in regard to all the complicated modes of worship, and all the various ceremonial rites observed by the devotees in the Indian temples, till the ensuing chapter, which will fully describe

See Thevenot's Travels in India, p. 79. This author is asserted by some writers never to have been in India; but he certainly was, and the account of what he personally saw is detailed in these travels, which are equally entertaining and authentic.

them.

Our more immediate business is with the temples themselves.

The Peninsula was the region of India last conquered by the Mohammedans; we may therefore expect to find in that region as well the genuine remains of the Indian religion as the unmixed features of the Indian architecture. In June, 1652, Tavernier commenced his journey from Masulipatam, (the Mesolia of Ptolemy,) on the Coromandel-coast, to Golconda, and the first pagoda of consequence which he remarked was that of BEZOara, or BUZWARA, as Major Rennell writes the word. It is now only a fort on the Kistna river, but was then probably a considerable town; for, its temple is described by Tavernier as une pagode fort grande, not inclosed with walls, but erected upon fifty-two lofty colums, with sta tues of the Indian deities standing between the columns. Though the temple itself thus, described, which seems to have been rather the sanctuary than the pagoda itself, a term which includes the whole structure, was without walls, in the form of the Monopteric buildings, mentioned by Vitruvius in his History of Architecture, yet it was situated in the midst of an oblong court, plus longue que large, encompassed with walls, round which ranged a

gallery raised upon sixty-six pillars in the manner of a cloister.*

It is rather unfortuate that this traveller, as well as others, have not been more particular in their descriptions of the form and ornaments of the columns which they saw in this country: many of which were undoubtedly erected before the Grecian orders of architecture were invented; and none of which, most assuredly, had those orders for their model. From repeated inquiries, made by me, I learn that they are in general of a fashion that bears some remote resemblance to the Doric; and, indeed, the weight and magnitude of the buildings they support seemed to require pillars approaching in strength to those of that primitive, simple, aud robust order. It is not impossible that the Greeks might derive from India their first notion of an order naturally dictated by a mode of building, widely different from the light, elegant, and airy style in which the Grecian edifices are generally erected. But on this subject, I shall hereafter trouble the reader with a disquisition of some extent. I omit, at present, his description of the monsters and demons affreux, as he calls them, with huge horns, and

* Voyage des Indes, tom. iii. p. 226, Edit, Rouen, 1713,