58 PICTURES AND PEN " PICTURES

which a library has found a haven for its treasures, very
precious and. ancient palm-leaf manscripts. Eeminiscent
of the missionary who lived many years of toil in Tanjore
is the church of Schwarz.

In the town, the main thoroughfare is busy with its
little shops, its beggars, its scorpion-trainers, its hawkers,
and its tiny wayside stalls of fly-blackened fruit: oxen-
drawn hackney carts, awkward, blary "horned buses and
motor-cars, reckless cyclists, jostling pedestrians, and
streams of country folk carrying strange assortments of
sundry village produce all mingle with unconscious
incongruity in this Tanjore that is as old as it is
semi-new.

Dusty roads lead out of Tanjore to its environs and
neighbouring towns. Along the roads the eye perceives
a succession of ruined temples and wayside shrines:

bridges connect the towns of this tract through which
flow the many branches of the Cauvery. Every town
has its temples and its own history; for, it was in the
South that the historic houses of the Pallavas, the
Cholas, the Oheras, and the Pandyas ruled. The
Pandyas had Madura for their capital, an ancient city
where lived great Tamil scholars, and where Tamil
literature reached its meridian; Madura with its
wonderful temple to the G-oddess of the Almond Eyes—
Meenakshi of Madura.

The peasants are busy in their fields; while the
men plough and the women sow, the children chase
away the crows. In the harvest season there is thresh-
ing and winnowing of the grain. As the eye gazes
on these scenes and transmits them to *the brain, the
mind te filled with questions. What would this region