FOREXQO.V 245
so arrogant that even the poorest looked a noble
lord, the crowd that streamed along the narrow
streets of Jhalawar behind the old srrey walls could
vie in picturesqueness with the populace of Udaipur.
From a house in no wise different from its neigh-
bours came loud bursts of cheerful music.
ci Is there some festival going on ? "s I asked.
" I'd have thought it was too early for a wedding."'
My surprise amused the Maharaja. " Xothinq of
the kind," he said. "Just go up and have a look.
You think it's an ordinary house, don't you ?
Well, you'll see that there's a Jain temple inside/"
The house, like all the others in the street, stood
back from the roadway on a wide platform, on
to which I stepped. These spacious thresholds of
solid masonry in front of the doorways jut out into
the middle of the street, like raised terraces. From
where I stood beside the stone door-jamb I saw
beyond the darkness of the portico an inner court-
yard bathed in sunlight, and a white temple
serenely luminous in the morning calm.
In the midst of a little courtyard paved with
sun-bright flags, framed in the pillared darkness of
a cloister two huge stone elephants twice life-size
stood face to face, guarding the entrance of the
shrine. Their trunks uplifted in salute shored up
the golden pediment.
The band whose lively strains I had heard when
I was in the street a moment past was playing now a
slow, soft melody. On my left, out of sight in the cool
darkness underneath the covered gallery, a choir of
children was chanting liturgic psalms. Now and
again a deeper voice broke through the thin, shrill
chant, which for a moment paused while someone,
presumably a teacher, spoke a few words of expla-
nation, slowly articulated with an obvious effort to