1833.] on Abt in Guzerdt. 165 
tails, trunks, and riders of the elephants have been broken off, though’ 
since replaced ; and the dome of ApusirJ1'-pDEWwat is cracked in one or 
two places. The earthquake of 1819 is said to have had some effect. 
on these buildings, but although the Brahmans and Jains formerly car- 
ried on violent controversies, it does not appear that the former injured 
the Jain temples. The natives themselves speak with horror of the 
oppression of a Mahommedan prince known to them by the name of 
** Boera Badshah,’’ who is said to have ordered the temples in Abé 
to be levelled. Natives are at all times but bad chronologists, nor are 
they in this instance able to give any distinct account either of the 
time or of the individual whose name excites such irritating feelings. 
It is on record however that a Sultan of Ahmeddbdd in Guzerat, by 
name Mdhmid Begra, sent a force to levy tribute on the Parsees, A. D. 
1450, and from the similarity of names, and the connection that sub- 
sisted between two such mercantile places as Ahmeddbad and Chandoult, 
it does not appear to me at all improbable that this is the individual*. 
The hand of time is now however fast injuring these buildings, and 
throughout the marble gives signs of decay. 
Without placing too much reliance on the inscriptions above alluded 
to, there is a circumstance which goes far to fix the date of these 
temples at a period when the Mahommedan power was great in India. 
All the figures are throughout represented with beards, which we 
know to be at variance with Hindi customs, and which is without doubt 
attributable to the same cause that induces the Hindi subjects of a 
Mahommedan government to follow the custom of their rulers, namely, 
submission to the powers that be.- In Sind, at the present time, such 
is the custom of all Hindis, and it is perhaps owing to this that the 
Moslem rulers ever spared the temples of the submissive people they 
conquered. It is to the same cause, I presume, that we have the re- 
presentation of the emperor of Delhi, though from the founder being 
his ‘‘ Admdar,” it may be more easily accounted for. 
With very few exceptions the people on Adu% do not worship at the 
temples of Dilwdrra, and there are only one or two Gurjis at the 
place, who could give, from sheer ignorance, little or no information 
concerning the surrounding scene of grandeur. They have, however, 
* J should have been more disposed to attribute the injury which the temples 
of Abé have received to Ma’amup of Ghizni, who came by Ajmir into Guzerat, 
in 1024, through Patan, and who was so zealous in the destruction of Hinda 
gods and temples, and has been rendered famous by the demolition of the one at 
Patan Somndth in Kattywar ; but if the inscription be true the whole of these tem- 
ples, even the oldest of them, are of a posterior date to that conqueror’s inroad, 
