Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/243

Rh at their summits and lost their angles; but enough remains for the eye to reconstruct the symmetrical piles and carry out the once perfect lines. The structures rise in terraces and broad courses, tapering like the Dravidian gopuras of southern India, and covered, like them, with images, bas-reliefs, and ornamental carvings. Grand staircases ascend from each of the four sides to square chapels or alcoves half-way up in the solid body of the pyramid, and each chapel once contained an image. The main or central temple now remaining still enshrines in its west or farther chamber an image of Ganesha, the hideous elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati. Broken images of Siva and Parvati were found in the south and north chambers, and Brahma is supposed to have been enshrined in the great east chapel. An adjoining temple holds an exquisite statue of Loro Jonggran, "the maiden with the beautiful hips," who stands, graceful and serene, in a roofless chamber, smiling down like a true goddess upon those who toil up the long carved staircase of approach. Her particular temple is adorned with bas-reliefs, where the gopis, or houris, who accompany Krishna, the dancing youth, are grouped in graceful poses. One of these bas-reliefs, commonly known as the "Three Graces" has great fame, and one and two thousand gulden have been vainly offered by British travelers anxious to transport it to London. Another temple contains an image of Nandi, the sacred bull; but the other shrines have fallen in shapeless ruins, and nothing of their altar-images is to be gathered from the rubbish-heaps that cover the vast temple court.