a scale, and with too small a diminution of the circumference from the base upwards.  It is two-fifths larger than the finished tower in circumference, and much more perpendicular.  Finding these errors when they had got some thirty feet from the foundation, the founder, Shams-ud-din (Iltutmish), began to work anew, and had he lived a little longer, there is no doubt that he would have raised the second tower in its proper place, upon the same scale as the one completed.  His death was followed by several successive revolutions; five sovereigns succeeded each other on the throne of Delhi in ten years.[25] As usual on such occasions, works of peace were suspended, and succeeding sovereigns sought renown in military enterprise rather than in building churches.  This church was entire, with the exception of the second minar, when Tamerlane invaded India.[26] He took back a model of it with him to Samarkand, together with all the masons he could find at Delhi, and is said to have built a church upon the same plan at that place, before he set out for the invasion of Syria.

The west face of the quadrangle, in which the tower stands, formed the church, which consisted of eleven large arched alcoves, the centre and largest of which contained the pulpit.  In size and beauty they seem to have corresponded with the Minar, but they are now all in ruins.[27] In the front of the centre of these alcoves stands the metal pillar of the old Hindoo sovereign of Delhi, Prithi Raj, across whose temple all the great mosque, of which this tower forms a part, was thrown in triumph.  The ruins of these temples he scattered all round the place, and consist of colonnades of stone pillars and pedestals, richly enough carved with human figures, in attitudes rudely and obscenely conceived.  The small pillar is of bronze, or a metal which resembles bronze, and is softer than brass, and of the same form precisely as that of the stone pillar at Eran, on the Bina river in Malwa, upon which stands the figure of Krishna, with the glory around his head.[28]

It is said that this metal pillar was put down through the earth, so as to rest upon the very head of the snake that supports the world; and that the sovereign who made it, and fixed it upon so firm a basis, was told by his spiritual advisers that his dynasty should last as long as the pillar remained where it was.  Anxious to see that the pillar was really where the priests supposed it to be, that his posterity might be quite sure of their position, Prithi Raj had it taken up, and he found the blood and some of the flesh of the snake’s head adhering to the bottom.  By this means the charm was broken, and the priests told him that he had destroyed all the hopes of his house by his want of faith in their assurances.  I have never met a Hindoo that doubted either that the pillar was really upon this snake’s head, or that the king lost his crown by his want of faith in the assurance of his priests.  They all believe that the pillar is still stuck into the head of the great snake, and that no human efforts of the present day could remove it.  On my way back to my tents, I asked the old Hindoo officer of my guard, who had gone with me to see the metal pillar, what he thought of the story of the pillar?