________________
DECEMBER, 1861.)
MISCELLANEA
429
ische Bibliotheken (Breslau, 1839); and by J. Matter, Essai Historique sur l'Ecole d'Alexandris, 2 vols. (Paris), 1820, the latter especially may be consulted with profit.
J. B.
the mouths, and both have on the foreheads the third eye, placed vertically, which gives to Siva the name of Trilochana, and which is generally
TWO BEONZE MASKS FROM MAISOR. The accompanying woodcuts represent two bronze masks that were dug up, at no great depth below the surface, early last year, close to an old village temple at Kanajor, in the Mudigiri taluq in Maisur (lat. 13° 6 N., long. 75° 40' E.), 3 miles Sw. from the town of Mudigiri, and 17 or 18 miles above Saklaspur on the Hemavati.
They are cast in a lightish brass-coloured bronze, and are here represented on a scale of half the original dimensions. The backs are open, so as allow them to be attached to wooden, metal, or stone figures representing the bodies of the personages intended. Both faces are characterized by the tusks usually assigned to images of Bhairava and Kali, protruding from the wicks of
borne by all the forms of that Deva, and by his gana or demon troop of followers. The seven Någa or cobra hoods on the garland over the brow of each--their intertwined bodies forming the band which unites them into a sort of fillet, and their tails coiled up in little flat curls-are also characteristic marks of the Saiva class of images. In the first these cobrahoods have a resemblance to leaves, but this is not unfrequently the case, even in separate images of snakes. The first mask has also a hole in the left cartilage of the nose as if for a ring. The other has been supposed to represent a male head, but the distinction is not marked.
Such masks for images of gods, made of bronze, silver or gold, are quite comnion in the south
