Next beyond them were three pilasters
clinging to the ceiling. This part of the cavern was in the light from the
entrance; but farther along, considerably obscured in the darkness of the
subterranean temple, were scores, and perhaps hundreds, of others. The
pillars were not the graceful forms of modern times, and many of them had
lost all shape.
This temple is said to have been excavated in the ninth century. The walls
are covered with gigantic figures in relief. The temple is in the form of a
cross, the main hall being a hundred and forty-four feet in depth. The
ceiling is supported by twenty-six columns and eighteen pilasters, sixteen
to eighteen feet high. They look clumsy, but they have to bear up the
enormous weight of the hill of rock, and many of them have crumbled away.
At the end of the colonnade is a gigantic bust, representing a Hindu
divinity with three heads. Some say that this is Brahma, as the three
symbols of the creator, preserver, and destroyer, forming what is sometimes
named the Hindu trinity. But the best informed claim that the figure
represents Siva, the destroyer of the triad of gods. All the reliefs on the
walls relate to the worship of this divinity, while there is not a known
temple to Brahma.
The principal piece of sculpture is the marriage of Siva to the goddess
Parvati; and it is identified as such, wholly or in part, because the woman
stands on the right of the man, as no female is permitted to do except at
the marriage ceremony.
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