Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/46

24 down the staircase, we were deafened by the flutes and flageolets of the priests and flag-bearers toiling up with water-jars just brought from the river. The sacred elephants at the foot of the stairs saluted us with lifted fore feet and waving trunks, rubbing their foreheads as they begged, plainly demanding a "prissint," after the custom of the country.

It was a short drive of three miles down to the temple of Vishnu at Srirangam, on an island in the dry bed of the Kaveri. This, the largest temple in southern India, is on a magnificent scale, its fifteen gopuras so many marvels of architecture; the greatest of them falling short of its intended three hundred feet by the interruption of building during the French and English wars of the eighteenth century, when the French intrenched themselves at Srirangam and mounted cannon on the gopuras. The outer, inclosing wall of the temple measures three thousand feet each way, and within that lies a first quadrangle of bazaars. A second gopura admits to a quadrangle where the three thousand high-caste Brahmans of the temple dwell. We drove on through a third and a fourth gopura, in one passage disputing right of way with a temple elephant, who backed out before our brougham, and, with the courtesy of a well-bred creature, swept his trunk and lifted a fore foot in apology. The last gateway had great teak doors, and the doctor of the temple and director of the Srirangam government hospital met us there; also the council of priests and five huge elephants, their foreheads striped with the same yellow and