THE MAHADEO HILLS. 90 



below. If tradition be believed, no mortal foot has ever 

 trodden the dark interior of tlie Andeh-K()lh I myself 

 never found an entrance to it, though, with the aid of 

 ropes, I got once at the easiest place within a few 

 hundred feet of the bottom. I may say, however, for 

 the benefit of adventurous explorers, that a way in may 

 probably be found by going round behind the Mjih.adeo 

 peak, and following down the bed of the stream which 

 issues from the cave of the shrine I am about to 

 describe, and which, I think, eventually falls into the 

 Koh under the scarp of Chauradeo. 



Legend has made the Andeh-K6h the retreat of a 

 monstrous serpent, which formally inhabited a lake on 

 the plateau, and vexed the w^orshippers of Mahadeo till 

 the god dried up the serpent's lake, and imprisoned the 

 snake himself in this rift, formed by a stroke of his 

 trident in the solid rock. It needs no very ingenious 

 interpreter of legend to see in this wild story an allusion 

 to the former settlements of Biiddhists (referred to as 

 snakes in Brahrainical writings) on the Puchmurree hill, 

 and their extinction on the revival of Brahmanism in 

 the sixth or seventh century. Certain it is that there 

 once was a considerable lake in the centre of the 

 plateau, formed by a dam thrown across a narrow gorge, 

 and that on its banks are still found numbers of the 

 large flat bricks used in ancient buildings, while in the 

 overhanging rocks are cut five caves (whence the name 

 of Puchmurree), of the character usually attributed to 

 the Biiddhists. Beneath the lower end of the lake lies a 

 considerable stretch of almost level land, on which are 

 still traceable the signs of ancient tillage, in the form 

 of embankments and water-courses. Lookinsf from the 

 portico of the rock-cut caves, it is not difficult for the 



