A Fallen Idol

In the cool of an early morning, more than a hundred years ago, an elderly priest was sitting under the pilastered portico of a little temple, just outside the village of Chandra-gurry, in Southern Mysore. It was the ordinary village of the place and period, fortified by a low mud wall, and consisting of lines of two-storied houses, gay with broad vertical stripes of red and white, and roofed with tile or ragged Palmyra leaves. On three sides it was surrounded by peepul and tamarind groves, and level plantations of rice, cotton, and millet, intersected by gleaming water-channels; on the other, the ground rose, by gradual slopes and plateaux, with stretches of velvety grass and stately trees, towards the rugged heights beyond. The temple stood on a knoll at the head of the first of these slopes — a graceful building, with its cluster of snow-white domes arranged in pyramid form, crowned by an elaborately carved pinnacle, upon which rose a pole, ending in a gilded ball.