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No. IV 1
JAINA ART IN SOUTH INDIA
89
gentian. The village is embowered in fruit and flower-trees and intersected by a labyrinth of hollow ways or lanes worn by the rains and tread of generations. Rough steps ascending to a covered entrance like a lych-gate lead up to the houses that stand back among the trees. The banks and walls built of laterite blocks black with age are shrouded with creeping plants, azure convolvuli, and a profusion of delicate ferns sprouting from every crevice, and words are wanting to describe the exquisite varieties of grass that wave everywhere on walls and roofs. Bird-of-paradise plumes, filmiest gossamer, wisps of delicate-spun glass, hardly equal in fairy Aneness the pale green plumy tufts that spring in upregarded loveliness-after the monsoon. Shade and seclusion brood over the peaceful neighbourhood, and in the midst stand the greatest of Jaina temples built nearly five centuries ago " 1.
1. Walhouse, cited by Sturrock, cp. cit.; pp. 87-8.
