In the forecourt a cast-metal nymph presides over a sham-bronze fountain.In the twilight of the great galleries the gods are assembled in groups, standing or sitting, rigid or contorted into epileptic attitudes, and thin bodies of human aspect end in legs or arms resembling serpents or huge fins, rather than natural limbs: Kali, the eight-armed goddess, leaping in the midst of daggers, performing a straddling dance while she holds up a tiny corpse on the point of the short sword she brandishes; impassible Sivas wearing a tall mitre; Krishna playing the flute to the thousand virgins who are in love with him, and who fade into perspective on the panel. And every divinity has eyes of jade, or of white plaster, hideously visible against the pale grey stone softly polished by time.
ONE:And suddenly, emerging from the ruins, we came on a Moslem street with high walls, windowless, and waving plumes of banyan and palm trees rising above the houses.
ONE:Here are carvers of painted wooden toysred[Pg 10] and green dolls, wooden balls, nests of little boxes in varied and vivid colours.
TWO:Shortly before sunset the dastour arrivesthe high priestin white, with a white muslin turban[Pg 15] instead of the wax-cloth cap worn by other Parsees.
