28.  Most of the description of the Iron Pillar in the text is erroneous.  The pillar has nothing to do with Prithi Raj, who was slain by the Muhammadans in A.D. 1192 (A.H. 588).  The earliest inscription on it records the victories of a Raja Chandra, probably Chandra-varman, chief of Pokharan in Rajputana in the fourth century A.C. (E.H.I., 3rd ed., 1914, p. 290, note).  The pillar is by no means ‘small’ when its material is considered; on the contrary, it is very large.  That material is not ’bronze, or a metal which resembles bronze’, but is pure malleable iron, as proved by analysis.  It has been suggested that this pillar must have been formed by gradually welding pieces together; if so, it has been done very skilfully, since no marks of such welding are to be seen. . . .  The famous iron pillar at the Kutb, near Delhi, indicates an amount of skill in the manipulation of a large mass of wrought iron which has been the marvel of all who have endeavoured to account for it.  It is not many years since the production of such a pillar would have been an impossibility in the largest foundries of the world, and even now there are comparatively few where a similar mass of metal could be tumed out. . . .  The total weight must exceed six tons.’ (V.  Ball, Economic Geology of India, pp. 338, 339.) The metal is uninjured by rust, and the inscription is perfect.  An exact facsimile is set up in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, The pillar is shown, with the smaller arches of the mosque, in H.F.A. fig. 232.  See also Fanshawe, pp. 260, 264, and plates.  The inscription was edited by Fleet (Gupta Inscriptions, 1888, No. 32).  The dimensions of the pillar are as follows:  Height above ground (total), 22 ft,; height below ground, 1 ft. 8 in.; diameter at base, 16.4 in.; diameter at the capital, 12.05 in.; height of capital, 3 1/2 ft.  At a distance of a few inches below the surface it expands in a bulbous form to a diameter of 2 ft. 4 in., and rests on a gridiron of iron bars, which are fastened with lead into the stone pavement. (A.S.R., vol. iv, p. 28, pl. v.)

This last prosaic fact, established by actual excavation, destroys the basis of all the current local legends and spurious traditions.

29.  This name is printed Ouse in the author’s text.  The saint referred to is the celebrated Kutb-ud-din Bakhtyar Kaki, commonly called Kutb Shah, who died on the 27th of November, A.D. 1235.  Iltutmish died in April, A.D. 1236 (Beale).

30.  The royal tombs are in the village of Mihrauli, close to the Kutb.  See Carr Stephen, op. cit., pp. 180-4, and Fanshawe, pp. 280-4.

31.  That is to say, the revenue administration of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in 1765.

32.  He is now Emperor, having succeeded his father, Akbar Shah, in 1837. [W.  H. S.] He is known as Bahadur Shah II.  In consequence of his having joined the rebels in 1857, he was deposed and banished.  He died at Rangoon in 1862, and with him ended the line of Emperors of Delhi.  He was born on the 24th of October, 1775, and so was in his sixty-first year when the author met him.  His father was about seventy-eight (eighty lunar) years of age at his death.