re therefore the exact resemblance of
living beings, while the others could only be rude imitations'.
'Gauri', or the Fair, is the name of Parvati, or Devi, when she
appears with her husband Siva. On such occasions she is always fair
and beautiful. Sankar is another name of Siva, or Mahadeo, or Rudra.
On looking into the temple at the statue, a lady expressed her
surprise at the entireness as well as the excellence of the figures,
while all round had been so much mutilated by the Muhammadans. 'They
are quite a different thing from the others', said a respectable old
landholder; 'they are a conversion of real flesh and blood into
stone, and no human hands can either imitate or hurt them.' She
smiled incredulously, while he looked very grave, and appealed to the
whole crowd of spectators assembled, who all testified to the truth
of what he had said; and added that 'at no distant day the figures
would be all restored to life again, the deities would all come back
without doubt and reanimate their old bodies again'.

All the people who come to bathe at the fair bring chaplets of yellow
jasmine, and hang them as offerings round the necks of the god and
his consort; and at the same time they make some small offerings of
rice to each of the many images that stand within the same apartment,
and also to those which, under a stone roof supported upon stone
pillars, line the inside of the wall that surrounds the circular
area, in the centre of which the temple stands. The images inside the
temple are those of the three great gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
with their primaeval consorts;[15] but those that occupy the piazza
outside are the representations of the consorts of the different
incarnations of these three gods, and these consorts are themselves
the incarnations of the primaeval wives, who followed their husbands
in all their earthly ramblings. They have all the female form, and
are about the size of ordinary women, and extremely well cut out of
fine white and green sandstone; but their heads are those of the
animals in which their respective husbands became incarnate, such as
the lion, the elephant, &c., or those of the '_vahans_', or animals
on which they rode, such as the bull, the swan, the eagle, &c. But
these, I presume, are mere _capricios_ of the founder of the temple.
The figures are sixty-four in number, all mounted upon their
respective '_vahans_', but have been sadly mutilated by the pious
Muhammadans.[16]