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was about and when the sun stood high enough to cast rays of light on to some frontal features of the statue.
I took care not to ask the usual tourist question: What is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of that? About the details I would inform myself in due course. Sure enough, a young boy walked up to me and sold me a small guide book. In those days there was no bookstall at the foot of the holy hill. The booklet bore the imprint "Evening Bazar Mysore" and contained other among items the story of the two brothers Bahubali and Bharata, their bloodless combat and how, many years later, a king's minister by the name of Chamundaraya had a visionary dream which caused him to have the colossal statue of Bahubali sculptured as an ageless symbol of the ageless truth that man's conquest of his own ego is his highest conquest.
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Then there was the other hill, Chandragiri, with the elegant Manastambha pillar, the Cave of Bhadrabahu, the ancient inscriptions chiselled into the rock, the Basadis with beautifully carved
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