SOUTHERN INDIA is a ierin applied some times to all the Peninsula of India south of the Nerbadda river, sometimes to that portion of it lYing south of the Kistna river. In the .latter restricted sense, it is occupied by the Canarese, part of the Telugu, Tamil, Malealainotind Tulit speakinff races; and comprises part of the Circars, the king'cloms of Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore, and the British provinces of Nellore, Guntur, the Ceded Districts, Chingleput, N. and S. Arcot, Salem, Tanjore, Tinnevelly, and Coimbatore, all largely cultivated.
The architecture and ornamentation of the temples of Southern India have been made known by the representations and descriptions of Bija pur, Dharwar, Ahmadabad, and other cities, by Mr. Fergussou and Col. Taylor, and they are by far the most interesting and complete memorials of the sacerdotal and regal grandeur of Southern India which are in existence, and give a striking impression of the former splendour of those empires. The Dharwar sculptures are the records of Chalukya, Hoi Sala, Bella!, and other local dynasties ; some of the figures are clothed with defensive armour, and there is no trace of a sewn garment. All the men's figures have short waist cloths or dhotis, like kilts, with an end in some cases cast over the shoulder. The women are in the same costume, but both in the earlier memorial stones and on some of the profuse sculpture on the temple at Hallabid, in Mysore (Mara Sanindra, tenth to twelfth century A:D.), they wear bodices,
tied in front, as Hindu women wear them at pre sent. Many temples .in the south and west of India, as also in Gujerat and Orissa, etc., are known to belong to periods as early as A.D. 500. Groups of figures on them are numerous. beyond description ; the men wear, head-dresses in the form of conical crowns, richly covered with orna-r ments, their bodies are naked, and their breasts and arms show necklaces and armlets of very ornate patterns. From the loins to the knee, or iniddle of the thigh, they have in most instances kilts, as it were, also coinposed of ornaments ; and many are altogether naked, both male and female, with a girdle of ornamental pattern round the loins. These figures abound atuong the sculptures of EIlora, and upon the IIindu temples of Dhar war and Mysore of the eighth to the thirteenth century ; also upon the Chola. temples at Con jeveraan and elsewhere, probably of the same era. In the Jain sculpture the male and female figures are invariably naked, but ornamented in general with necklaces, bracelets, armlets, and zones of exceedingly intricate and beautiful patterns, in imitation, probably, of the chased gold work of the period.