Speaking of the corridors of the Rameswaram temple, Dr. Fergusson says:

No engraving can convey the impression produced by such a display of labour, when extended to an uninterrupted length of 700 feet. None of our cathedrals are more than 500 feet, and even the nave of St. Peter's is only 600 feet from the door to the apse. Here the side corridors are 700 feet long, and open into transverse galleries as rich in detail as themselves. These, with the varied devices and mode of lighting, produce an effect that is not equalled certainly anywhere in India. Here we have corridors extending to 4,000 feet, carved on both sides, and in the hardest granite. It is the immensity of the labour here displayed that impresses us, much more than its quality, and that, combined with a certain picturesqueness and mystery, produce an effect which is not surpassed by any other temple in India, and by very few elsewhere.

Turning next to sculpture, testimony is not wanting to show that the Hindus had cultivated this art to a very high standard. Dr. Fergusson's opinion on the early stage of sculpture has already been quoted. The same authority speaks highly of the carving and sculpture work as exhibited in the various architectural structures in India. Regarding the Black Pagoda of Kanarak in Orissa, he says that the exterior is carved

with infinite beauty and variety on all their twelve faces, and the antefixæ at the angles and bricks are used with an elegance and judgment a true yavana could hardly have surpassed.

Again, speaking of the gopuras of the temple at Taipatry, the same authority writes:

The perpendicular part is covered with the most elaborate sculpture, cut with exquisite sharpness and precision in a fine, close-grained hornblende stone, and produces an effect richer on the whole, perhaps, in better taste than anywhere else in this style.

Regarding the Kaet Iswara temple in Mysore, he writes:

From the basement to the summit it is covered with sculptures of the very best class of Indian arts, and these so arranged as not materially to interfere with the outlines of the building, while they impart to it an amount of richness only to be .found among specimens of Indian art. If it were possible to illustrate this temple in anything like completeness, there is probably nothing in India which would convey a better idea of what its architects were capable of accomplishing.

Referring to some of the figures of gods and other objects of Hindu mythology depicted in the temple of Hullabid, not far from the Kaet Iswara temple, he says that

some of these are carved with a minute elaboration of detail which can only be reproduced by photography, and may probably be considered as one of the most marvellous exhibitions of human labour to be found even in the patient East.

These few extracts from the work of one who has devoted his lifetime to the subject, and is ranked as a high authority, amply

show that architecture and sculpture had reached a high state of excellence among the Hindus. With the fall of the Hindu kingdoms of India the taste for temple building died out, and the art has come to be nearly forgotten.

Painting and statuary, too, were not unknown in ancient India. Though the beginning of the art of painting is lost in oblivion, it appears to have reached a state of excellence about the time of the construction of the Ajanta caves-in the fifth century A.D, The fresco painting of the Ajanta Viharas, particularly of No. 16, representing scenes from Gautama Buddha's life, &c., are among the best specimens of the art. The figures are natural and elegant, the human faces are pleasant and expressive, and convey the feelings which they are meant to convey; and the female figures are supple, light, and elegant, and have an air of softness and mild grace which mark them peculiarly Indian in style.'

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The Southern Jainas have erected some colossal statues, supposed to be of one of their Rajahs. Of one of these, at Sravana Belgula, which attracted the attention of the Duke of Wellington when, as Sir Arthur Wellesley, he commanded a division at the siege of Seringapatam, a statue of 70 feet 3 inches in height, Dr. Fergusson writes: Nothing grander or more imposing exists anywhere out of Egypt, and even there no known statue surpasses it in height.” There are two other similar statues, 41 feet 5 inches, and 35 feet, in height, at Karkala and Yannar respectively.

From the brief survey of the industries of India which has just been taken, it will be evident that industry and enterprise were not wanting. The history of this unfortunate country shows that various causes were at work for their deterioration and downfall. When the political conditions of the people were far from safe, how could they be expected to devote any attention to the cultivation of the arts, or the development of the resources of the country? Now that the British Government has firmly established its supremacy in this land of proverbial wealth and importance,' and a century of British rule has conferred security of property and person to the inhabitants of this vast empire, it is time enough that the people exerted themselves a little in this direction. But every such attempt means an amount of capital which Indian capitalists are either unable or unwilling to bring into the field. The only alternative, therefore, is State aid. When the Indians are unable to help themselves even in the matter of social reform, and hundreds of memorials are being addressed to Government to interfere in the matter, it is idle to expect them to inaugurate schemes which, unaided by the State, under existing circumstances in India, must end in total failure.

MURLI MANOHAR.

Hyderabad: March 1891.

THE WILD WOMEN

No. I

AS POLITICIANS

ALL women are not always lovely, and the wild women never are.. As political firebrands and moral insurgents they are specially dis-tasteful, warring as they do against the best traditions, the holiest functions, and the sweetest qualities of their sex. Like certain 'sports' which develop hybrid characteristics, these insurgent wild women are in a sense unnatural. They have not 'bred true '—not according to the general lines on which the normal woman is constructed. There is in them a curious inversion of sex, which does not necessarily appear in the body, but is evident enough in the mind. Quite as disagreeable as the bearded chin, the bass voice, flat chest, and lean hips of a woman who has physically failed in her rightful development, the unfeminine ways and works of the wild women of politics and morals are even worse for the world in which they live. Their disdain is for the duties and limitations imposed on them by nature, their desire as impossible as that of the moth for the star. Marriage, in its old-fashioned aspect as the union of two lives, they repudiate as a one-sided tyranny; and maternity, for which, after all, women primarily exist, they regard as degradation. Their idea of freedom is their own preponderance, so that they shall do all they wish to do without let or hindrance from outside regulations or the restraints of self-discipline; their idea of morality, that men shall do nothing they choose to disallow. Their grand aim is to directly influence imperial politics, while they, and those men who uphold them, desire to shake off their own peculiar responsibilities.

Such as they are, they attract more attention than perhaps they deserve, for we believe that the great bulk of Englishwomen are absolutely sound at heart, and in no wise tainted with this pernicious craze. Yet, as young people are apt to be caught by declamation, and as false principles know how to present themselves in specious paraphrases, it is not waste of time to treat the preposterous claims put forth by the wild women as if they were really serious-as if this little knot of noisy Mænads did really threaten the stability of society and the well-being of the race.

Be it pleasant or unpleasant, it is none the less an absolute truth-the raison d'être of a woman is maternity. For this and this alone nature has differentiated her from man, and built her up cell by cell and organ by organ. The continuance of the race in healthy reproduction, together with the fit nourishment and care of the young after birth, is the ultimate end of woman as such; and whatever tells against these functions, and reduces either her power or her perfectness, is an offence against nature and a wrong done to society. If she chooses to decline her natural office altogether, and to dedicate to other services a life which has no sympathy with the sex of humanity, that comes into her lawful list of preferences and discords. But neither then nor while she is one with the rest, a wife and mother like others, is she free to blaspheme her assigned functions; nor to teach the young to blaspheme them; nor yet to set afoot such undertakings as shall militate against the healthy performance of her first great natural duty and her first great social obligation.

The cradle lies across the door of the polling-booth and bars the way to the senate. We can conceive nothing more disastrous to a woman in any stage of maternity, expectant or accomplished, than the heated passions and turmoil of a political contest; for we may put out of court three fallacies-that the vote, if obtained at all, is to be confined to widows and spinsters only; that enfranchised women will content themselves with the vote and not seek after active office; and that they will bring into the world of politics the sweetness and light claimed for them by their adherents, and not, on the contrary, add their own shriller excitement to the men's deeper passions. Nor must we forget that the franchise for women would not simply allow a few well-conducted, well-educated, self-respecting gentlewomen to quietly record their predilection for Liberalism or Conservatism, but would let in the far wider flood of the uneducated, the unrestrained, the irrational and emotional-those who know nothing and imagine all -those whose presence and partisanship on all public questions madden already excited men. We have no right to suppose that human nature is to be changed for our benefit, and that the influence of sex is to become a dead letter because certain among us wish it so. What has been will be again. In the mirror of the prophet, which hangs behind him, the Parisian woman of the Revolution will be repeated wherever analogous conditions exist; and to admit women into active participation in politics will certainly be to increase disorder and add fuel to the fire of strife.

We live by our ideals. Individually they may fall into the dust of disappointment, and the flower of poetic fancy may wither away into the dry grass of disillusion. Nevertheless the race goes on cherishing its ideals, without which, indeed, life would become too hard and sordid for us all. And one of these ideals in all Western

countries is the home. Home means peace. It means, too, love. Perhaps the two are synonymous. In the normal division of labour the man has the outside work to do, from governing the country to tilling the soil; the woman takes the inside, managing the family and regulating society. The more highly civilised a community is the more completely differentiated are these two functions. In the lower strata of society the women work in the fields with the men; but as yet we have not had handsome young lady cornets in the army, nor stalwart gentlemen occupied with the week's wash and Mary-maid's demands for Turk's heads and house-flannels.

Part of this ideal of home is the rest it gives the man when he returns to it after a hard day's work in the open-a hard day's struggle in the arena. Here his thoughts drift into a smoother channel, his affections have their full outlet, and to his wife and children he brings as much happiness as he receives. The darker passions which the contests of life arouse are shut out; the sweeter influences of the family, the calmer interests of the intellect, the pleasures of art and society remain. We are speaking of the ideal, to which we all in some sort aspire, and in which we believe—for others if not for ourselves. When we have come to think of it as mere moonshine we have achieved our own spiritual death; when we have acted and legislated as if it were moonshine we have decreed our national degradation.

But where will be the peace of home when women, like men, plunge into the troubled sea of active political life? Causes of disunion enough and to spare exist in modern marriage. We need not add to them. More especially we need not add to them by introducing a new and quite unnecessary wedge into brittle material of which highly strained nerves and highly developed tastes, with complexity of personal interests, have already destroyed the old cohesive quality. Imagine the home to which a weary man of business, and an ardent politician to boot, will return when his wife has promised her vote to the other side, and the house is divided against itself in very truth. Not all husbands and wives wear the same badge, and we all know miserable cases where the wife has gone directly and publicly counter to the husband. If these things are done in the green tree of restricted political action, what would happen in the dry of active political power? Women are both more extreme and more impressible than men, and the spirit which made weak girls into heroines and martyrs, honest women into the yelling tricoteuses of those blood-stained saturnalia of '92, still exists in the sex; and among ourselves as elsewhere.

The dissension that the exercise of this political right would bring into the home is as certain as to-morrow's sunrise. Those who refuse to see this are of the race of the wilfully blind, or of that smaller sect of enthusiasts who believe in a problematical better rather VOL. XXX-No. 173

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