great temple of Bindh Madhu, which was demolished in the seventeenth century by the Emperor Aurungzebe.  Tavernier, the French baron, who travelled thither about the year 1680, has preserved a brief description of it.  The body of the temple was constructed in the figure of a colossal cross (i. e., a St. Andrew’s Cross), with a lofty dome at the centre, above which rose a massive structure of a pyramidal form.  At the four extremities of the cross there were four other pyramids of proportionate dimensions, and which were ascended from the outside by steps, with balconies at stated distances for places of rest, reminding us of the temple of Belus, as described in the pages of Herodotus.  The remains of a similar building are found at Mhuttra, on the banks of the Jumna.  This and many others, including the subterranean temple at Elephanta and the caverns of Ellora and Salsette, are described at length in the well-known work by Maurice; who adds that, besides these, there was yet another device in which the Hindoo displayed the all-pervading sign; this was by pyramidal towers placed crosswise.  At the famous temple of Chillambrum, on the Coromandel coast, there were seven lofty walls, one within the other, round the central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gate-ways in the midst of each side which forms the limbs of a vast cross.”

In Mexico pyramids were found everywhere.  Cortez, in a letter to Charles V., states that he counted four hundred of them at Cholula.  Their temples were on those “high-places.”  The most ancient pyramids in Mexico are at Teotihuacan, eight leagues from the city of Mexico; the two largest were dedicated to the sun and moon respectively, each built of cut stone, with a level area at the summit, and four stages leading up to it.  The larger one is 680 feet square at the base, about 200 feet high, and covers an area of eleven acres.  The Pyramid of Cholula, measured by Humboldt, is 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty five acres!  The great pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, is 746 feet square, 450 feet high, and covers between twelve and thirteen acres.  So that it appears that the base of the Teotihuacan structure is nearly as large as that of Cheops, while that of Cholula covers nearly four times as much space.  The Cheops pyramid, however, exceeds very much in height both the American structures.

Senor Garcia y Cubas thinks the pyramids of Teotihuacan (Mexico) were built for the same purpose as those of Egypt.  He considers the analogy established in eleven particulars, as follows:  1, the site chosen is the same; 2, the structures are orientated with slight variation; 3, the line through the centres of the structures is in the astronomical meridian; 4, the construction in grades and steps is the same; 5, in both cases the larger pyramids are dedicated to the sun; 6, the Nile has “a valley of the dead,” as in Teotihuacan there is “a street of the dead;” 7, some monuments in each class have the nature of fortifications; 8, the smaller mounds are of the same nature and for the same purpose; 9, both pyramids have a small mound joined to one of their faces; 10, the openings discovered in the Pyramid of the Moon are also found in some Egyptian pyramids; 11, the interior arrangements of the pyramids are analogous. ("Ensayo de un Estudio.”)