After the French occupied the temple as a fortress in 1777, it was never purified or sanctified again, and the deserted court was a contrast to the other temples we had seen. Two barefooted priests slipped silently across an angle of the cloisters, the colossal stone bull crouched under its grease and garlands, and only the fluttering parrakeets gave any sign or sound of life to the vast inclosure. We gazed in wonderment at the court, the tower, and the exquisite little temple of Subrahmanya, the martial son of Shiva, on whose steps we met two glib, sightseeing babus, who began at once to upbraid us for the proselytizing work of the missionaries. The one with the largest Vishnu mark on his brow had graduated as a civil engineer at Calcutta University, but the exact sciences had not taught him to disbelieve in greasy images, or opened his eyes to any absurdities in his creed, and his torrent of words came like the flow of a phonograph. "Why do you come here to destroy our religion?" he pattered. I denied the charge. "Why do you wish us to give up our gods for your gods?" I denied the plural, and after the twittering parrakeet had followed us awhile, we left him shouting the rest of his set speech to the empty court.
It was a rest to find one heathen temple deserted, to be spared the oily Brahman guide, and to trace in peace the details of this most beautiful of Dravidian temples, the purest example of that style. The great vimana, or pagoda, thirteen stories in height, mounts like the gopuras of Madura, course upon course, carved over with figures and ornaments, two hundred feet to the ball at the peak—a granite
