Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/279

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STONE-CARVING
175

work. For some reason, which is not immediately evident, he did not seem at home in this material, and usually his figures are archaic in character, his dragons limp and wanting in vigour, while his ornament is heavy, and lacks feeling. His architecture, when executed in stone, is not so open to these adverse criticisms, the various features such as the columns, capitals, mouldings, and niches being executed in an artistic and workmanlike manner, but the higher flights of fancy, as for instance his figure-work, compare unfavourably with his pictorial ideas expressed in other mediums. Nevertheless, in some examples this material has been very cleverly manipulated, a frieze continued around two stories of a temple in the Patan Durbar, and representing in lithic pictures a complete epitome of one of the Hindu epics, being a wonderful piece of stone-carving in miniature, and there are a few others almost its equal.

In textiles Nepal is singularly deficient, and except for the common cloth of the country, little or no weaving is undertaken. Certain