Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/67

Rh and miles from a white official or any pale-face. But Daniel reassured one by his calm magnificence, his grandiloquent phrases and evident pride in the amazing spectacle which he, as grand impresario, was about to present. Three hundred of these highest-caste Dikshatar Brahmans, or priestly ones, descended from a first Cholukyan king, they say, live with their families within the temple inclosure. All are rich, enjoying inherited wealth and the great income which this popular temple derives from its votaries and pilgrims. There were fine, intelligent faces among them, and, barring the disfigurement of the painted sect-mark on the forehead, one could easily appreciate how much finer is the type and the cast of countenance of these long-descended aristocrats than the common Hindu face seen in bazaars and street crowds. All had fine, straight noses, level brows, and well-formed heads, the hair shaved all around the edges as though for a Chinese queue, and then drawn and knotted at the side behind the left ear, precisely as small children in north China twist their locks. All wore the white dhotee, twisted as a skirt around the body, left nude to the waist, save as one and another chose to fling the end of the long cloth over the head and shoulders as protection from the alternating sun and rain. The sacred white cord over one shoulder and the carved Brahman bead on a thread around the neck were the only other bits of apparel worn, although each one carried, in a twist of the girdle, a silver or brass box filled with the ashes of sandalwood or the dung of the sacred cow, with which to paint the caste- and