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Most of the school geographies of our childhood depict this entrance of the Cave of Elephanta, supported by carved pillars, hewn out of the rock just where they stand, part and parcel of it. The roof is supported by many carved pillars, also similarly hewn out of the native stone. Some of them have been willfully broken, others have mouldered away from atmospheric exposure.
A visit to the Island of Elephanta, in the outer harbor of Bombay, situated about ten miles from the city, will afford all strangers much gratification. A small excursion steamer, tug-boat size, was chartered for our purpose, and with a favoring current took us down to the island in an hour, but was twice as long in working her way back against the tide.
George's; ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific presentations of him. Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India.
He would not deign to examine even the masterpieces of Elephanta, or the mysterious hypogea, concealed southeast from the docks, or those fine remains of Buddhist architecture, the Kanherian grottoes of the island of Salcette. Having transacted his business at the passport office, Phileas Fogg repaired quietly to the railway station, where he ordered dinner.
Elephanta comes closer and we see the undergrowth on the hills, and it does not seem very unfamiliar; it is considerate the way in which Nature leads you from one scene to another without any change sudden enough to shock you; in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world I believe, you may find features that remind you of places you have known.
I need not speak of the similarity of many religious rites and beliefs existing in Hindostan and among the inhabitants of Mayab. What to think, effectively, of the types of the personages whose portraits are carved on the obelisks of Copan? Who would not take them to be pure aborigines if they were seen in Yucatan instead of Madras, Elephanta and other places of India.
Then drew a little and loafed a good deal on the Bundar watching the lateen-rigged boats. These boats take passengers to Elephanta or go off to the ships in the Bay with cargoes of brightly coloured fruits. The scene always reminds me of that beautiful painting by Tiepolo of the landing of Queen Elizabeth in our National Gallery I daresay one or two Edinburgh people may know it.
The Island of Elephanta is about six or eight miles distant from Bombay. Herr Wattenbach was so kind as to take me there one day. I saw some rather high mountains, which, however, we did not ascend; we visited only the temples, which are very near to the landing- place.
From what oriental head-dresses, burnous affectedly draped, golden rings after the style of the Empress of the Lower Empire, have I not escaped by my prudence? But this is all an enigma to you. You are in ignorance of my story, unless some too-well-posted Englishman hinted it to you in the temple of Elephanta.
In the religious instinct which led the Buddhists to build, at such enormous expense of time and money, the cave-temples of Elephanta, Ellora, and Carlee; in the idolatrous Hindoo temples of Madura and Tanjore, the shrines of Ceylon, the pagodas of China, and the temples of Japan, one detects an underlying and elevating sentiment, a grand and reverential idea, in which there may be more of acceptable veneration than we can fully appreciate; but in the Pyramids we have no expression of devotion, only an embodiment of personal vanity, which hesitated at nothing for its gratification, and which proved a total failure.
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