XV

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^71 TIME there was when ships with bulging sails came

P- from the Far East and far-off lands to this
deserted shore; great fleets of merchant ships were
fitted here, and from this forgotten port embassies were
sent to the Emperor of China. Silence reigns where
there was so much bustle, activity, trade and. passenger
traffic. In the melancholy song of the casuarina pines
swaying in the soughing wind, and the distant sound of
waves that wash day and night a lonely shore temple,
Nature seems to mourn the fate of this solitary shore.
The Shore Temple is the last of the Seven Pagodas—
the other six, the story goes, lie under the sea. A
modern lighthouse warns ships off this part of the coast
that used to welcome them long before Madras
had a harbour.

Admidst the pines is a group of temples, each one
exquisitely carved, and hewn out of a single rock. These
rock temples, and the cave temples further on, and the
monolithic animals—the lion, the elephant, and the
bull—were executed in the prosperous days of this
Seven Pagodas, between the third and eighth century—
when the dynasty of the Pallavas ruled in Southern
India. They built temples over a large portion of their
territories, but the monoliths are their best claim to
remembrance.

The seat of these Pallavas was Oonjeevaram, Kanchi
of their times, and one of the seven sacred, cities like
Hardwar and Ujjain—Kanchi, the GS-olden City of