South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses #262124

H IS little book owes its origin to a suggestion made by His Excellency Lord Carmichael, when he was Governor of Madras in the year 1912. He felt that, while there was a multitude of books dealing with Hindu religion and incidentally with Hindu iconography, there was no popular handbook which would give information about the images one commonly sees in temples or museums in Southern India, and that it would be a distinctly useful thing to supply that want. The Madras Government entrusted the task to me, presu mably because my official duties bring me very often to visit the various temples in the Province and to study and classify the images found therein.