1837.] condition of Oujein or Ujjayani. 815 



covers them has committed but little injury, and the edges of the 

 greater part of the kunds and canals are unbroken and even sharp. 

 Two or three of the north chambers of the arcade cannot indeed be en- 

 tered, the deposit of the river having choked them up, and kahi (of 

 •which I know not the classical name) disfigures a few of the tanks,. 

 but a trifling expenditure of time and money would restore its origi- 

 nal beauty to the place. Indeed the water-palace may perhaps be 

 said to have received more injury from friends than enemies, from 

 innovation than neglect, for as Sadi expresses it : 



•» *» 



" Every one who came erected a new fabric. He departed and evacuated the 

 tenement for another, and this in like manner formed new schemes. But no one 

 ever finished the building." 



More fully to explain my meaning, it will be necessary to premise 

 that a very cursory view of the buildings detects them to have been 

 the work of neither one architect nor one age. The palace on the island 

 was evidently erected on the site and with the fragments of a Hindu 

 temple, dedicated doubtless to some form of Vishnu. The debris of 

 ruined fabrics are largely used in every stone wall near Oujein, but 

 here the robbery has been more extensive, and many of the dislocated 

 stones betray by the similarity of the patterns figured on them, that 

 they were once united in a more honorable place. 



Kaliya-deh, the serpent's haunt, seems a name borrowed from that 

 of the kund in the Jumna at Muttra, whose waters were poisoned by 

 a serpent. It was thou " Oh Krishna, who slewest the venom breathing 

 Kaliya*." In confirmation of this on a large and conspicuous slab 

 stuck into the wall of the island I observed an excellently sculptured 

 representation of Krishna blowing the flute, while eight petticoated 

 gopis are playing on different instruments or dancing about him. 



The practice of giving to favourite spots the names of celebrated 

 foreign sacred places, is common at Oujein and elsewhere. By this 

 simple process, the Hindu thinks to concentrate a quantity of holiness 

 into a small space, and needy, feeble, or business-bound piety indulges 

 in the plausible consolation of worshipping at home and at ease, the 

 objects of a difficult or expensive pilgrimage. 



The palace and wall of the island, the bridges and wall of the en- 

 closure, I suspect to have been the first buildings erected here by 

 Musalmans ; assigning a later date to the water-works : for the front 



* Thus Jayadeva addresses Krishna, 

 5 l 2 



