India's Cave Temple

The "Care temple" of Karli, India, is rightly considered one of the greatest wondera of the world. This gigantic recess in the mountain ledge has been chiseled by human hands f rom porphyry as liard as the hardest fiint. The nave is one hundred and twenty-four feet long, forty-five feet broad and forty-six fcet from floor to ceiling. Before the en trance of the temple stands a monster stone elephant upon whose baek is seated a colossal goddess, all hewn from one solid block of stone. Like the temple walls and the outside ornaments, every artiele of adorning soulpture on the inside is hewn from the native rock. There are aisles on each side, separated from the nave by octagonal pillars of stone. The capital of each pillar is crowned with two kneeling elephants, on whose backs are seated two figures representing the divinities to whom the temple is dedicated. These figures are perfect and of beautiful features, as, indeed, are all the representations of deities and divinities in this peculiar temple. The repulsiveness so characteristic of modern Hindoo and Chínese pagodas is here wholly wanting-. Each figure is true to life, or, rather, to art, there being no mythical half horse, half man, or beast-birds depicted in this underground wonder of Karli. This wondrous underground pagoda or cave temple has been a standing puzzle for the learned archseologists of both Europe and Asia for the last two thousand five hundred years, and is as much of an enigma to-day as it was in the time of Confucius.