Chamber, with a doorway on each side
covered by a pediment, with a trefoil-headed niche containing a bust
of the Hindu triad, and on the flanks of the main entrance, as well
as on those of the side doorways, were pointed and trefoil niches,
each of which held a statue of a Hindu divinity.
The interior decorations of the roof can only be conjecturally
determined, as I was unable to discover any ornamented stones that
could with certainty be assigned to it. Baron Hugel doubts that
Marttand ever had a roof; but, as the walls of the temple are still
standing, the numerous heaps of large stones that are scattered about
on all sides can only have belonged to the roof.
I can almost fancy that the erection of this sun-temple was suggested
by the magnificent sunny prospect which its position commands. It
overlooks the finest view in Kashmir, and perhaps in the known world,
Beneath it lies the paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and
cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all
sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon
the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it
sublime; for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no petty peep into
a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in
breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which
lies beneath "the ken of the wonderful Marttand."
The principal buildings that still exist in Kashmir are entirely
composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking the highest
polish - a property to which I mainly attribute the beautiful state
of preservation in which some of them at present exist.
