A RUN THROUGH KATHIAWAR. 309 



it. Mrs Postans, in her '"\Vosteru India in 1838,' 

 makes the following reference to it : " Having casu- 

 ally heard of the existence of a cave near or in the 

 temple of Xeemnath, I made inquiries on the subject, 

 but the Bhats stoutly denied the alleged fact ; how- 

 ever, having obtained a clue to its position, we de- 

 spatched one of our people in earch of it. Succeed- 

 ing in finding the place, he reported it to be a small 

 excavation leading from an enclosed gallery, contain- 

 ing a very old image of Parswanath. The peculiar 

 sanctity of the holy person consisted of his being 

 always in a perspiration : we could not hear any 

 other reason for the reverence shown to this particu- 

 lar image, or for the evident dread of the Bhats lest 

 it should be polluted by our presence." Mr James 

 Burgess, the antiquarian, who did not gain admission 

 to the cave, but some of Avhose native attendants 

 may have done so and described it to him imperfectly, 

 says of it, in his ' Xotes of a Visit to Somnath, Gir- 

 nar,' o. : " A small door admits into an apartment 

 behind three figures, whence a descent leads down 

 into a sunken storey in which is a large white marble 

 image, held in the most superstitious veneration by 

 the sect, and to conceal which the _p{/ar& will tell 

 any number of lies, each in succession contradicting 

 the preceding. It has a slight hollow in the shoul- 

 der, said to have been caused by water that used to 

 drop from the ear whence it obtained the name of 

 Amijhara 'nectar-drop.'" This derivation also re- 



