﻿THE KINGDOM OF NEPAL. 313 



facing the temple, where all the chiefs dependent 

 upon his orders were assembled, and where also was 

 collected the wealth of the temple; and, wishing to 

 speak to me before I went away, he called me into 

 the varanda. From this incident 1 obtained a sight 

 of the temple, and then passed by the great court 

 which was in front : it is entirely marble almost 

 blue, but interspersed with large flowers of bronze 

 well disposed, to form the pavement of the great court- 

 yard, the magnificence of which astonished me ; and I 

 do not believe there is another equal to it in Europe. 



Besides the magnificence of the temples, which their 

 cities and towns contain, there are many other rarities. 

 At Cafhmandu, on one side of the royal garden, there 

 is a large fountain, in which is one of their idols, 

 called Nurayan. This idol is of blue stone, crowned 

 and sleeping on a mattress of the same kind of stone - ? 

 and the idol and mattress appear as floating upon the 

 water. This stone machine is very large: I believe 

 it to be eighteen or twenty feet long, and broad in pro- 

 portion ; but well worked, and in good repair. 



In a wall of the royal palace of Cafhmandu-, which 

 is built upon the court before the palace, there is a 

 great stone of a single piece, which is about fifteen 

 feet long, and four or five feet thick : on the top of 

 this great stone there are four square holes at equal 

 distances from each other. In the inside of the wall 

 they pour water into the holes, and in the court- 

 side, each hole having a closed canal, every person 

 may draw water to drink. At the foot of the stone is 

 a large ladder, by which people ascend to drink j 

 but the curiosity of the stone consists in its being 

 quite covered with characters of different languages 

 cut upon it. Some lines contain the characters of the 

 language of the country; others the characters of 



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