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 3so DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES. CONTENTS. Pattadakal and Dharwar Temples Conjivaram Tanjor Tiruvalur .SYirangam Chidambaram Rame^varam Madura Tinnevelly Kumbakonam Vellor and Perur Vijayanagar. WHEN we turn from these few scattered rock-cut examples to the great structural temples of the style, we find their number is so great, their extent so vast, and their variety so perplexing, that it is extremely difficult to formulate any distinct ideas regarding them, and still more so, as a matter of course, to convey to others any clear idea on the subject. To any one at all familiar with the present status of the population of the province, the greatest wonder is how such a people could ever have conceived, much less carried out, such vast undertakings as these, and that so recently that some of the greatest and boldest were only interrupted by our wars with the French scarcely a hundred and fifty years ago. The cause of this, however, is not far to seek. Ever since we took possession of the country, our countrymen have been actuated by the most beneficent intentions of protecting the poor against the oppression of the rich. By every means we have sought to secure the ryot in his holding, and that he should not be called on to pay more than his fair share of the produce of his land ; while to the landowner we have offered a secure title to what belonged to him, and a fixed income in money in lieu of his portion of the produce. To a people, however, in the state of civilisation to which India has reached, a secure title and a fixed income only means the power of borrowing on the occasion of a marriage, a funeral, or some great family festival, ten times more than the borrower can ever pay, and our courts as inevitably give the lender the power of foreclosing his mortgage and selling the property. During the century in which this process has been going on, the landed aristocracy have gradually disappeared, and the wealth of the country has passed into the