They Have Goggle Eyes And Open
Mouths, And Their Faces Are In Distorted And Exaggerated Action.
One, Painted Bright Red,
Tramples on a writhing devil painted
bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea-
green devil, an indigo
Blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend,
and a bright pink monster treads under his clawed feet a flesh-
coloured demon. I cannot give you any idea of the hideousness of
their aspect, and was much inclined to sympathise with the more
innocent-looking fiends whom they were maltreating. They occur
very frequently in Buddhist temples, and are said by some to be
assistant-torturers to Yemma, the lord of hell, and are called by
others "The gods of the Four Quarters."
The temple grounds are a most extraordinary sight. No English fair
in the palmiest days of fairs ever presented such an array of
attractions. Behind the temple are archery galleries in numbers,
where girls, hardly so modest-looking as usual, smile and smirk,
and bring straw-coloured tea in dainty cups, and tasteless
sweetmeats on lacquer trays, and smoke their tiny pipes, and offer
you bows of slender bamboo strips, two feet long, with rests for
the arrows, and tiny cherry-wood arrows, bone-tipped, and feathered
red, blue, and white, and smilingly, but quite unobtrusively, ask
you to try your skill or luck at a target hanging in front of a
square drum, flanked by red cushions. A click, a boom, or a hardly
audible "thud," indicate the result.
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