232 GANJAM. 



the mountain is visited, in virtue of 

 some undefined title to reverence, no 

 sect claims a right to its temples, nor 

 is any act of worship performed in 

 them. 



The only legend I have heard which 

 speaks of the sojourn of men in this 

 solitude is derived, I believe, from the 

 Mahabharata, and says that the Pan- 

 dava brothers, returning to Hastinapur 

 from the south, were driven by their 

 enemies to take refuge on this mountain 

 for two years. Certain it is, however, 

 that the ridge which forms the summit 

 where the temples stand, rugged and 

 narrow, and rising to a height of nearly 

 five thousand feet, surrounded by for- 

 ests and remote from any cultivated 

 lands, would be a very untenable posi- 



