Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/133

 the very centre of India. Beyond, on its sad margin, lie these terrible caves of Ellora, which he reaches at nightfall, and with some trouble he finds a guide with whom to penetrate the arcana.

At first the guide hesitates; but they decide to enter a vast avenue, with ribbed sides and vault faintly lit by their lantern, suggesting the vertebræ. Passing down the cave, which has the proportions of a Gothic cathedral, they can dimly discern in recesses the upright figures of deities, 20 to 30 feet in height, motionless and calm in outline. But the cave enters upon a second stage, and here the guardian deities stand out of the gloomy background, contorted in every expression of agony and fury. To add to the terror, a babel is aroused of birds of prey, whose shrieks resound through the length of the Temple.

When issuing under the open sky they see the stars, they look up to them as if from an abyss, and realise they have only passed the peristyle of the Temple. The heart of the mountain has been carved out, leaving vast granite walls which spring up into the night, terrace superposed upon terrace, carved into pieces of