Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official eBook

William Henry Sleeman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,051 pages of information about Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official.

Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official eBook

William Henry Sleeman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,051 pages of information about Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official.

12.  Sir A. Cunningham was stationed at Gwalior for five years, and had thus an exceptionally accurate knowledge of the fortress.  His account, which corrects the text in some particulars, is as follows:- ’the great fortress of Gwalior is situated on a precipitous, flat-topped, and isolated hill of sandstone, which rises 300 feet above the town at the north end, but only 274 feet at the upper gate of the principal entrance.  The hill is long and narrow; its extreme length from north to south being one mile and three-quarters, while its breadth varies from 600 feet opposite the main entrance to 2,800 feet in the middle opposite the great temple.  The walls are from 30 to 35 feet in height, and the rock immediately below them is steeply, but irregularly, scarped all round the hill.  The long line of battlements which crowns the steep scarp on the east is broken only by the lofty towers and fretted domes of the noble palace of Raja Man Singh.  On the opposite side, the line of battlements is relieved by the deep recess of the Urwahi valley, and by the zigzag and serrated parapets and loopholed bastions which flank the numerous gates of the two western entrances.  At the northern end, where the rock has been quarried for ages, the jagged masses of the overhanging cliff seem ready to fall upon the city beneath them.  To the south the hill is less lofty, but the rock has been steeply scarped, and is generally quite inaccessible.  Midway over all towers the giant form of a massive Hindu temple, grey with the moss of ages.  Altogether, the fort of Gwalior forms one of the most picturesque views in Northern India’ (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 330).

13.  The nakedness of the image in itself proves that Buddha could not be the person represented.  His statues are never nude.  The Gwalior figures are images of some of the twenty-four great saints (Tirthankaras or Jinas) of the Digambara sect of the Jain religion.  Jain statues are frequently of colossal size.  The largest of those at Gwalior is fifty-seven feet high.  The Gwalior sculptures are of late date—­the middle of the fifteenth century.  The antiquities of Gwalior, including these sculptures, are well described in A.S.R., vol. ii, pp. 330-95, plates lxxxvi to xci.

14.  This mosque is the Jami’, or cathedral, mosque ’situated at the eastern foot of the fortress, near the Alamgiri Darwaza (gate).  It is a neat and favourable specimen of the later Moghal architecture.  Its beauty, however, is partly due to the fine light-coloured sandstone of which it is built.  This at once attracted the notice of Sir Wm. Sleeman, who, &c.’ (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 370).  This mosque is in the old city, described as ’a crowded mass of small flat-roofed stone houses’ (ibid. p. 330).

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Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.