Indian Antiquities: or, Dissertations relative to the ancient geographical divisions, the ... primeval theology, the grand code of civil laws, the original form of government, and the ... literature of Hindostan, compared ... with the religion, laws, government and literature of Persia, Egypt...

Front matter

INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. VOL. .77,*- /in mi /in/ 'Jri/ii/ ,-f l/nni-,1,,,/ ,>,///////- Of H'/.OKK, in 1 1 p p r i (''m/il, ,,.*'//, //,r WIN li. /fir GliOB V. , n n ,/ /An' SHHI'I'.NI Cfii.i/itii/i 111/ l/ir rr/r/in/n/ \\ KMl'TltA . '''' '' 1/1//1I1U it TMKITV, ii-n//tli"'i'i/ rn t/ir /niil . - -- XI. ol>i-lilWs. at well at Pyramids, were/,,i Egvpt.jymitlr i-frhe Solai Ray, an^,eonj-tqunUh,^atr*d to Osixu INDIAN ANTIQUITIES: OR, DISSERTATIONS RELATIVP. TO THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS, THE PURE SYSTEM OF PRIMEVAL THEOLOGY, THE GRAND CODE OF CIVIL LAWS, . THE ORIGINAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT, THE WIDELY-EXTENDED COMMERCE, AND THE VARIOUS AND PROFOUND LITERATURE, or HINDOSTAN COMPARED, THROUGHOUT, WITH THE RELIGION, LAWS, GOVERNMENT, AND LITERATURE OF PERSIA, EGYPT, AND GREECE. THE WHOLE INTENDED AS INTRODUCTORY TO, AND ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF HINDOSTAN, UPON A CO.WPREHENS1VE SCALE.

VOL. III. In which the SACRED EDIFICES and SYMBOLICAL RITES of HINDOSTAN and EGYPT are compared. LONDON: PRINTED, FOR THE AUTHOR, BY W. BULMER AND CO, CLEVELAND-ROW ; AND SOLD BY J. WHITE, FLEET-STREET. 1806. TO Sir WILLIAM SCOTT, Knt. LL.D. His Majesty's ADVOCATE-GENERAL, CHANCELLOR of the DIOCESE of LONDON, AND A MEMBER of the BRITISH PARLIAMENT, THIS PORTION OF THE INDIAN THEOLOGY, A SUBJECT NOT TOTALLY UNCONNECTED WITH THAT PROFESSION IN WHICH HE FILLS WITH HONOUR SO DISTINGUISHED A STATION, IS RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED, 3Y HIS OBLIGED OBEDIENT SERVANT, THOMAS MAURICE. Directions to the Book-binder for placing the Plates. Portal of Luxore - frontispiece. Tanjore Pagoda - page n Mexican Temple ______ 49 Serpentine Temple ------ 123 Pantheon - - - - - - 177 Temple of Essnay - ■ - - - _ _ 10^ C vii 3

Preface

. 1 h e Reader, during this continued Disserta tion on the Indian Theology, is earnestly requested occasionally to advert to the ample prospectus prefixed to it in a former portion of this work : by that means, he will be better enabled to comprehend the plan pursued by the author in the course of so extensive an investigation. From consecrated groves and subter raneous caverns, he is here introduced into those stupendous structures, the pagodas of Hin dostan ; and as, in the former volume, the Indian and Egyptian sacred caverns were compared, so, in the present, the parallel is extended to the erected temples of either country. The same C viii 1 eminent Sanscreet scholars, Mr. Halhed, Sir William Jones, and Mr. Wilkins, who were his guides before in discussing the mysterious rites paid in those caverns to the solar orb and fire, and in unfolding all the wonders of the sidereal metempsychosis, will attend his progress through the Delta and the Thebais ; and, for the first time that the attempt has in any extent been undertaken, the Antiquities of India will be made to illustrate those of Egypt.

The Author would have been happy to have concluded in this volume his strictures on the Indian Theology, but he found that the very curious and interesting subject of the Oriental Triads of Deity opened so vast a field for inquiry, and, withal, led to such important con sequences in our own system of theology, that it was utterly impossible to contract it within the narrow limits he had prescribed himself. The present is by no means the period for suppressing any additional testimonies to the truth of one of the fundamental articles of that noble system, and he trusts that he has brought together such a body of evidence as will decisively C93 establish the following important facts; first, that in the Sephiroth, or three superior Splendors, of the ancient Hebrews may be discovered the three hypostases of the Chris tian Trinity; secondly, that this doctrine flourished through nearly all the empires of Asia a thousand years before Plato was born ; * and, thirdly, that the grand cavern pagoda of Elephanta, the oldest and most magnificent temple of the world, is neither more nor less than a superb temple to a tri-une God.

Omat Fagoda op Tawjoute- CHAP. II. The Temples of India, Egypt, and Greece, examined and compared; including an extensive historical Survey of the progressive Improvement of the Oriental Nations in Architecture; particularly in sacred Architecture.

Section I

The first-erected Temples formed to resemble Groves and Caverns. — The stupendous Magnitude and Elevation of the Indian Pagodas. — The most ancient and celebrated in Hindostan, viz. that of Jaggernaut — that of Be nares — that of Mattra — that of Trip petty — and that of Seringham, — successively and minutely described. — An affecting Story relative to the first Defilement of Sering ham by the European Armies.— The amazing Revenues which these and other Pagodas anciently enjoyed. — 40.000 Souls supported by the Revenues of Seringham alone. — A more accurate Survey of their internal Sculp tures, and a Description oj the monstrous Idols adored in them.-. — Egypt and India seem to have assembled in these Pagodas the Animals deemed more peculiarly sacred to each Country ; as, for instance, the Memphian Bull and the Cneph of Egypt are discovered in the Bull of Seeva and the Serpents at Elephanta — while the Ram, sacred to Jupi ter, and the Goat, to Pan, are seen blended with the Ape of Rama, the Rhinoceros, and the Elephant. .Ej merging from the deep shade of caverns, where the image of the solar orb was adored, and from the still deeper obscurity of subter raneous hieroglyphics, we shall traverse with increased pleasure the regions illumined by the glorious sun himself.

Let us now contemplate those more conspicuous, but not less majestic, monuments of antiquity, the pagodas that adorn the surface, and erect their lofty summits in every quarter, of Hindostan. To the solemn mysteries of superstition, celebrated in caves and amidst the secret recesses of the secluded forest, succeeded the not less splendid and ostentatious worship, practised in the more ancient of these superior temples : temples constructed of such enormous dimensions, that the bigoted natives think them, equally with the caverns we have described, the work of in visible agents. Most of them are of an astonish ing height and extent; while the stones, of which they are composed, are of a magnitude hardly credible. The height, for instance, of the pyramidal gateway, leading to the magni ficent pagoda of Chillambrum, on the coast of Coromandel, exceeds 120 feet; the circum ference of the outward wall of that of Sering ham extends nearly four miles ; and the stones, that form the stately roof of its principal gate way to the South, are thirty-three feet long* * Cambridge's War in India, p. 25, Oct.

Edit. I cite Mr. Cambridge in this place, not in preference to Mr. Orme, but because Mr. Orrae, thougli he bears testimony to the magnificence of the stones that form this gateway, does not give their exact dimensions ; he only says, ". they are still larger than those that form the pillars of it." and five and a half in diameter. We are equally awed by the majestic appearance of these august fanes, and struck with wonder at the laboured decorations which are displayed on their sur face. In these sublime structures, indeed, the polished elegance which characterises the Gre cian architecture has no share. The reigning features are rude magnificence and massy so lidity ; and these have been thought still more strongly to point out " the hand of those indefatigable artists who fabricated the pyramids,, the sphynxes," and the other vast colossal statues of Egypt.

While we range through these immense fa brics, we can scarely yet consider ourselves as entirely emancipated from the gloom of the ancient groves and caves described in the for mer volume ; so great, in many instances, is the similitude between them. This similitude first gave rise to an Essay on the origin and pro gress of Oriental architecture, which was originally intended to 'have been inserted in the Dissertation on the Literature, Arts, and Sci ences of Hindostan; but, as it is immediately connected with the subject of the present volume, and as the vast field which I have undertaken to explore will not allow of the appearance of C 15 3 that portion of my work for a long period, from my eagerness and anxiety to present the historical part of it to my readers, it is inserted in this chapter, in which an extensive parallel is drawn between the sacred edifices of India and Egypt.

In fact, of these pagodas, the most venerable for their antiquity, as, for instance, those of Deogur and Tanjore, engraved among the accurateand beautiful designs of Mr.Hodges, are erected in the form of stupendous pyramids, resembling huge caverns, and admitting the light of heaven at one solitary door ; they are, however, within artificially illuminated by an infinite number of lamps, suspended aloft, and kept continually burning. The similitude which the internal appearance of some of these more ancient Indian temples bears, in point of gloomy solemnity, to the original excavated pagoda, so forcibly struck Mandelsloe, on his visit to this country in 1638, that he expressly asserts, " they looked more like caves and recesses of unclean spirits, than places designed for the ex ercise of their religion."* As the Hindoos im proved in architectural knowledge, the form of the pagoda gradually varied ; the labours of art were exhausted, and the revenue of whole pro- * See the Travels of J. Albert de Mandelsloe, translated by John Davies, and published at London in 1662. vinces consumed, in adorning the temple of the Deity.

In proof of this, may be adduced that passage which I have before quoted from the Ayeen Akbery, and which acquaints us that the entire revenues of Orissa, for twelve years, were expended in the erection of the temple to the sun. The outside of the pagodas is in general covered all over with figures of Indian animals and deities, sculptured with great spirit and accuracy, while the lofty walls and cielings within are adorned with a rich profusion of gilding and paintings, representing the feats of the ancient Rajahs, the dreadful conflicts of the contending Dewtahs, and the various incarna tions of the great tutelary god Veeshnu. In regard to the great similitude which the earliest erected temples, both in India and Egypt, bore to ancient grove temples, it is strikingly evident and forcibly arrests atten tion in the arrangement of their columns, at regular and stated distances, forming vast aisles and gloomy avenues that extended all round the outside, as well as through the whole in ternal length of the edihce.

It must be owned, however, that this style of building, with cir cular wings and long ranging avenves of co lumns, in the manner of the temples of Philae and the serpent Cnuph, is more particularly c 17 1 discernible in the temples of Egypt, where an infinity of pillars was necessary to support the ponderous stones, often thirty or forty feet in length, that formed the roofs of the stupendous structures of the Thebais. That similitude, likewise, irresistibly struck the be holder in the very form of those columns, of which the lofty taper shaft, as, in particular, those of Esnay, resembled the majestic stem of the cedar and palm, while their capitals ex panded in a kind of foliage, representative of the compressed branches of the trees more usually deemed sacred. There is, in Pococke, a large plate of Egyptian columns, with their varied capitals : those capitals, in general, bulge out towards the centre, somewhat after the manner of the cushion that crowns the Indian column ; and most of them are fluted or chan neled in the manner of those in the Indian caverns and pagodas, The Suryatic and Mithriac cavern, with its circular dome for the sculptured orbs, sus pended aloft and imitative of those in the heavens, to revolve in, and the Zoroastrian worship of fire, conspired to give the Asiatic temples at once their lofty cupolas, and that pyramidal termination which they alternately assume, and which are often seen blended vol. hi.

B together in different parts of the same edifice. Their astronomical and physical theology stamped upon other shrines of the Deity sometimes the oval form, that is. the form of the mundane egg, the image of that world which his power made and governs ; and on others again, as those of Benares and Mattra, the form of the St. Andrew's cross, at once symbolical of the four elements, and allusive to the four quarters of the world. But I will not, in this place, an ticipate the observations that will occur here after in more regular order, and with more strict propriety. I shall first describe some of the more cele brated Indian temples ; I shall then direct the eye of the reader to the massy fanes of the Thebais ; and the reflections, resulting from the survey of those of either country, will be detailed in the dissertation alluded to.

The reader will please to observe, that I by no means intend or presume to give a general history of Oriental architecture: I shall restrain my observations to that of India, Egypt, and the early periods of the Greek and Roman em pires, and shall principally consider in the detail their astronomical and mythological spe culations. I shall commence my description of the C 19 3 temples of India with observing, from Tavernier, by whose account I shall principally guide myself throughout this survey, and whose assertions, upon inquiry, I find to be nearly right, that the existing pagodas of the greatest antiquity and celebrity, above those already instanced in all India, are the pagodas of Jaggernaut, Benares, Mattra, and Tripetty, to which I shall add, from private autliority, the name of one which that traveller did not visit, that of Seringham.

I adopt Tavernier's account in preference to any other for two reasons ; first, because his narration, so far as it relates to objects which he actually visited, has ever been deemed, of all Indian travellers, the most genuine and authentic ; and, secondly, because he travelled through India before those dreadful devastations commenced, which the execrable spirit of bigotry that actuated the mind of the Indian emperor, Aurengzeb, urged him to commit on the ancient and hallowed shrines of India. This fierce Mohammedan, however renowned in the field of politics and war, tarnished all the glory obtained in that field by his intolerant zeal, and the remorseless fury with which he persecuted the benign religion and unoffending priests of Brahma. But for these unprovokad outrages, even the enor- Ba mous accumulation of crimes, and the torrent of kindred blood through which he ascended the throne of India, might have been somewhat veiled by the historian, and ascribed to the per fidious and often sanguinary intrigues of East ern courts ; but this conduct in Aurengzeb, so different from the mild and lenient Akber, and the immediate descendants of that considerate and beneficent monarch, covers his name with everlasting infamy, and forbids his biographer to palliate his glaring and reiterated atrocities.

It was about the middle of the last century, and before the august temple of Benares was polluted by those lofty Mahommedan minarets, which, Mr. Hastings says, make it, ata distance, so conspicuous and attractive an object, that Tavemier travelled through a country which his pen has described in so entertaining a man ner. His particular description of the Indian pagodas commences at the eighteenth chapter of the first book of his travels in India ; and, as they are not numerous, I shall attend him in his visits to all those of note which he surveyed; and if the modern traveller in India should not find the description exactly consonant to the image which his recollection presents to his view, he will be candid enough to consider, that, at this day, near a century and a half have elapsed, t«-3 and that the country in which they are or were situated, has been, during that space, the the atre of constant wars, and the scene of successive devastations.

I shall not, however, confine myself to Tavemier: Mandelsloe, before-cited, travelled still earlier through that country ; and both Bernier and Thevenot occasionally deserve respectful notice. These amazing structures are generally erected near the banks of the Ganges, Kistna, or other sacred rivers, for the benefit of ablution in the purifying stream. Where no river flows near the foot of the pagoda, there is in variably, in the front of it, a large tank, or reservoir of water. These are, for the most part, of a quadrangular form, are lined with freestone or marble, have steps regularly de scending from the margin to the bottom, and Mr. Crauford observed many between three and four hundred feet in breadth.* At the entrance of all the more considerable pagodas there is a portico, supported by rows of lofty columns, and ascended by a handsome flight of stone steps ; sometimes, as in the instance of Tripetti,-}- to the number of more than a * See Mr. Crauford's Sketches, vol. i. p. 106. t See Voyage des Indes, torn. iii. p. 360.

Edit. Rouen, hundred. Under this portico, and in the courts that generally inclose the whole building, an innumerable multitude assembled at the rising of the sun, and, having bathed in the stream below, and, in conformity to an immemorial custom over all the East, having left their san dals on the border of the tank, impatiently await the unfolding of the gates by the minister ing Brahmin. The gate of the pagoda universally fronts the east, to admit the ray of the solar orb, and opening presents to the view an edifice partitioned out, according to M. Theve-. not in his account of Chitanagar, in the manner of the ancient cave-temples of Elora, having a central nave, or body ; a gallery ranging on each side ; and, at the farther end, a sanctuary, or chapel of the deity adored, surrounded by a stone ballustrade to keep off the populace. * The reader for the present must check his cu riosity in regard to all the complicated modes of worship, and all the various ceremonial rites observed by the devotees in the Indian temples, till the ensuing chapter, which will fully describe * See Thevenot's Travels in India, p. 79.

This author is asserted by some writers never to have been in India ; but he certainly was, and the account of what he personally saw is detailed in these travels, which are equally entertaining and authentic. them. Our more immediate business is with the temples themselves. The Peninsula was the region of India last conquered by the Mohammedans ; we may therefore expect to find in that region as well the genuine remains of the Indian religion as the unmixed features of the Indian architecture. In June, 1652, Tavemier commenced his journey from Masulipatam, (the' Mesolia of Ptolemy,) on the Coromandel-coast, to Golconda, and the first pagoda of consequence which he remarked was that of Bezoara, or Buzwara, as Major Rennell writes the word. It is now only a fort on the Kistna river, but was then probably a considerable town ; for, its temple is described by Tavemier as une pa gode fort grande, not inclosed with walls, but erected upon fifty-two lofty colums, with statues of the Indian deities standing between the columns.

Though the temple itself thus described, which seems to have been rather the sanctuary than the pagoda itself, a term which includes the whole structure, was without walls, in the form of the Monopteric buildings, mentioned by Vitruvius in his History of Architecture, yet it was situated in the midst of an oblong court, plus longue que large, en compassed with walls, round which ranged a gallery raised upon sixty-six pillars in the man ner of a cloister.* It is rather unfortuate that this traveller, as well as others, have not been more particular in their descriptions of the form and ornaments of the columns which they saw in this country: many of which were undoubtedly erected before the Grecian orders of architecture were invented ; and none of which, most assuredly, had those orders for their modA.

From repeated inquiries, made by me, I learn that they are in general of a fashion that bears some remote resemblance to the Doric; and, indeed, the weight and magnitude of the buildings they support seemed to require pillars approaching in strength to those of that primitive, simple, aud robust order. It is not impossible that the Greeks might derive from India their first notion of an order naturally dictated by a mode of building, widely different from the light, ele gant, and airy style in which the Grecian edifices are generally erected. But on this subject, I shall hereafter trouble the reader with a disquisition of some extent. I omit, at present, his description of the monsters and demons affreux, as he calls them, with huge horns, and * Voyage des Indes, torn. iii. p. 226. Edit. Rouen, 1713. t>5 3 numerous legs and tails, sculptured in this pa goda, because it is my intention to notice these emblematical figures when, in the next chapter, I come to consider the worship paid in these pagodas.

It is sufficient, at present, to remark ,that the Indians worship the Deity by symbols ; while his power, extending through various nature, and his venerated attributes are repre sented by animals characteristic of them. Thus, for instance, his wisdom is symbolized by a circle of heads, his strength by the elephant, his glory by horns, imitative of the solar ray, his creative energy by the male of animals of a prolific kind, as the bull or goat, while the combinations of these animals, or parts of ani mals, were intended to designate his united power, wisdom, and glory. Degrading to the Divine Nature as these representations appear to us, and as they really are, they are no more than might be expected from a race so deeply involved in physics as the Indians are, and so totally unassisted by divine revelation to correct their perverted notions.

In the neigh bourhood of this pagoda was another, the name of which is not mentioned, situated upon a lofty hill. This pagoda Tavemier describes as quadrangular, with a high cupola crowning the summit. The hill itself is ascended by no less than one hundred and ninety-three steps, every step a foot in height ; par un escalier de 193 marches, chacune d'un pied de haut. I add the original that I may not appear to exagge rate, i Leaving these comparatively small edifices and this immediate route of our traveller, let us once more attend him to the grand temple of Jaggernaut, the most celebrated but undoubtedly not among the oldest shrines of India. I am aware that this assertion is directly contrary to the opinion which Mr. Sonnerat appears to favour, who tells us that, according to the annals of the country and the sacred books, the pagoda of Jaggernaut is incontestably the most ancient ; and that, were its inward sanctuaries examined, in those sacred recesses would probably be discovered the most ancient and hallowed archives of the country.

The calculations of the Brahmins, he adds, carry its antiquity as far back as the time of Paritchiten, first king of the coast of Orissa, who flourished at the commencement of the Cali age, and by this calculation it should be of the astonishing antiquity of 4,800 years.* Neither from the appearance nor from the stile of this pagoda, which is not of a pyramidal form, but * See Sonnerat's Voyages, chap. iv. p. 108. C 273 is an immense circular fabric, does there arise any evidence of this stupendous antiquity. Jag gernaut is only another name for the great Indian god Mahadeo, who may be recognized by the vast bull, which, as related in a former page, juts out with an eastern aspect, from the centre of the building. The supposition of Major Rennell* is far more probable, that it was erected about the eleventh century, after the destruction of the superb temple of Sumnaut, in Guzzurat.

The very name of the deity Naut, which signifies Creator, strongly cor roborates this supposition ; and there is an old tradition in the neighbourhood that the deity of this temple swam thither from a more west erly region. I must refer the reader to the first volume of these Antiquities, and to the Geographical Dissertation, under the soobah of Orissa, for an ample account, extracted by me from the Ayeen Akbery and Hamilton's Voyage, of the first establishment of this temple, of the deity adored in it, of the ceremonies and rites practised in it, of the frequent ablu tion of Jaggernaut, and the great multitude of Brahmins and devout pilgrims daily fed at his august temple. The Brahmin fable, relative to its erection, asserts that the spot on which * See Memoir, pt 165, second edition. <«• it stands was peculiarly favoured by the Deity ; and Major Rennell perhaps gives the true reason why it was so ; viz. its remote situation from the scene of Mahmud's spreading conquests, and its being shut up from every approach, but on the side of the ocean, by impassable mountains and deep rivers.

What Tavemier has re corded relative to this pagoda is inserted in the pages immediately succeeding in the volume just referred to ; and to his description it is not ne cessary to add in this place any other particulars, than that it is the residence of the Arch-Brahmin of all India ; that the image of Jaggernaut stands in the centre of the building upon a raised altar, encompassed with iron rails, under a very lofty dome ; and that the sacred domains that belonged to the temple, the munificent donation of successive rajahs, once afforded pasturage to above 20,000 cows. The Peninsula of India, however, affords two instances of buildings which are undoubtedly among the most ancient, if they are not ab solutely the most ancient, of all the Indian temples. They are those of Deogur and Tan jore; and, as they have exercised the masterly and correct pencil of Mr. Hodges, in his celebrated designs of Indian buildings, ve may depend upon the accuracy both of the engraving C*9 3 and the accompanying concise description of them.

The pagodas of Deogur, according to that gentleman, shew the earliest stages of Hindoo architecture, being simply pyramids, by piling one massy stone upon another to a vast height. They are without any light whatever within, except what comes through a small door scarcely five feet high. In the centre of the building is a dark chamber, lighted by one solitary lamp, where the rites of their religion are per formed. The famous pagoda of Tanjore is not different from those of Deogur, but in its improved form and decorations *. Let us now attend M. Tavemier to the region properly called Hindostan, and explore the great and highly venerated pagoda of Be nares. This pagoda, he observes, derives a considerable portion of the distinguished cele brity which it enjoys from the superior sancti ty of the city in which it stands, the ancient and renowned Casi, a city devoted from the earliest periods to Hindoo devotion and science!

It is situated close to the shore of the Ganges ; into which stream, according to our traveller, a regular flight of stone steps descends, leading * See the account prefixed to the engravings of these temples in Designs in India. , directly down from the gate of the pagoda. The body of the temple itself, he informs us,* is constructed in the form of a vast cross, (that is, a St. Andrew's cross, allusive to the four elements,) with a very high cupola in the centre of the building, but somewhat pyramidal towards the summit ; and at the extremity of every one of the four parts of the cross there is a tower, to which there is an ascent on the outside, with balconies at stated distances, af fording delightful views of the city, the river, and adjacent country. With respect to the inside of this grand temple, he relates, that un der the high dome in the middle, there stands an altar, in form of a table, eight feet in length, and six in breadth, covered sometimes with rich tapestry and sometimes with cloth of gold or silver, according to the greater or less so lemnity of the festival, Upon this altar Taver nier saw several idols ; but one in particular, six feet high, arrested his attention, the neck of which was splendidly decorated with a chain of precious stones, of which the priests have variety for different festivals, some of rubies, some of pearls, and others of emeralds.

The head and neck of this idol were alone visible ; all the rest of the body was covered with an * Voyage de Tavemier, torn. iv. p. 149 Edit, a Rouen. embroidered robe, spreading in ample folds upon the altar below. On the right side of the altar he observed a strange compound figure of massy gold, which he calls une chimere, a chimæra, formed of the different parts of an elephant, a horse, and a mule, upon which, he was informed, that holy person used, when living, in his guardian care of mankind, to take long journeys ; and I must add, that this circumstance is another irrefragable proof, that many of the idols, adored in India, are deified mortals. He observed, likewise, in this pagoda, a certain idol of black stone, or the Som mon acodom, concerning which something more particular will occur hereafter.

That execrable spirit of bigotry which actuated the mind of Aurengzeb, so different from that of the mild and tolerant Abker, prompted that remorseless persecutor of the Hindoo faith to pollute this venerable fabric, and insult the religion of Brahma in its ancient sanctuary. Upon the majestic ruins of this august pile, which was visited by Tamerlane before its pollution, he erected a grand mosque, with two very lofty Mohammedan minarets, which, Mr. Forster,* in his elegant but concise account of this city, * Sketches of the Mythology and Customs of the Hin doos, by Mr. Forster, p. 4. says, at the distance of eight miles, strongly attract the eye of the traveller who approaches Benares on the river from the east quarter, and which, from their elevated height, seem to look down with triumph and exultation on the hum bled pride and degraded devotion of this once flourishing city and university.