Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1895-01-10

such congregation of precious stones
frightened, and gloomed, and blazed,
and chastencd, and glorified building
since sculptor's chisel cut its first
curve, or painters pencil traced it's
first figure, or mason's plumb line
| measured it's first wall, or architects
compass swept it's first circle.
The Tai has sixteen great arched
windows, four at each corner. Also
at each of the four corners of the Tai
stands minaret 1877 feet high. Also
at each side of this building is a splen-
did mosque of red sandstone Two
hundred and fifty years has the Tai
stood, and yet not wall is cracked,
nor mosaic loosened, nor an arch
sagged, nor panel dulled. The
storms of $50 winters have not marred,
nor the heats of $50 summers disintre-
grated marble. There is no story of
/ age written by MOSES on its white
surface. Montaz, the queen, was
beautiful, and Shah Jehan, the king,
here proposed to let all the centuries
of time know it. She was married at
20 years of age and died at 30. Her
life ended as another life began; as the
rose bloomed the rose bush persisted.
To adorn this dormitory of the dead,
at the command of the king, Bagdad
sent to this building it's cornelian,
and Ceylon it's lapis lazuli, and Pun
jab it's jasper, and Persia its amethyst,
and Thibet it's turquoise, and Lanka
| its sapphire, and Yemen its agate, and
Punah its diamonds; and bookstores,
and sardonyx, and chalcedony, and
moss agates are as common as though
they were pebbles. You find one spray
of vine beset with eighty and another
with one hundred stones. Twenty
thousand men were twenty years in
building it, and although the labor
was slave labor and not paid for, the
building cost what would be about
! 500, 600, 900 of our American money.
Some of the jewels have been picked
out of the wall by iconoclasts or con-
querors, and substitutes of less value
have taken their places; but the
vines, the traceries, the barab-
esques, the spandrels, the entablatures
are so wondrous that you feel like dat
ing the rest of your life from the day you
first saw them. In letters of black mar
BILE the whole of the Koran is spelled
out in and on this august pile. The
king sleeps in the tomb beside the
queen, although he intended to build
palace as black as this was white on
the opposite side of the river for him
self to sleep in. Indeed, the founda-
ton of such a metropolis of black mar
BILE is still there, and from the white
to the black temple of the dead a
bridge was to cross; but the son de-
throned him and imprisoned him, and
it is wonderful that the king had any
place at all in which to be buried. In
stead of windows to let in the light
upon the two tombs, there is a trellis
work of marble, marble cut so deli
cately thin that the sun shines through
it a, easily as through glass. Look the
world over and find so much translu-
cency; canopies, traceries, lace work,
embroideries of stone.
In these Elephanta Caves everything
is on a Samsonian and Titanian scale.
With chisels that were dropped from
nerveless hands at least eight CEN
turtles ago, the forms of the gods Brah-
ma, and Vishnu, and silva were cut
! into the everlasting rock silva is here
repl esented by figure sixteen feet
nine inches high one half man and one
half woman. Run a line from the
forehead straight to the floor of the
rock, and you divide this idol into mas
culine and feminine. Admired as this
idol is by many, it was to me about
the worst thing that was ever cut into
porphyry, perhaps because there is
hardly anything on earth so objection
able as being half man and half wo-
man. Do be one or the other, my
nearer. Man is admirable, and woman
is admirable, but either in flesh or trap
rock compromise of the two is hide
Gus. Save us from effeminate men and
/ masculine women.
Yonder is the King Ravana worship
ping. Yonder is the sculptured repre-
sentation of the marriage of SILVA and
Karhati. Yonder is Daksha, the son
of Brahma, born from the thumb of
his right hand. He had sixty daugh-
LerS. seventeen Ol luOSc uduSnGerS
were married to Kasyapa and became
mothers of the human race. Yonder
is god with three heads. The center
god has a crown wound with necklaces
of skulls. The right hand god is in a
paroxysm of rage, with forehead of
snakes, and in his hand is cobra. The
left hand god has pleasure in all it's
features and the hand has flower.
But there are gods and goddesses in
all directions. The chief temple of
this rock . is 1870 feet square and
has twenty-six pillars rising to
the roof After the conquerors
of other lands, and the tour
lists from all lands have Clipped, and
defaced, and blasted, and car
ried away curios and mementos
for museums and homes, there are
enough entrancements left to detain
one, unless he is cautious, until he is
down with some of the malarias which
encompass this land, or get bitten with
some of it's snakes. Yes, 1 felt the
. ohillv dampneSS Of the place and left