ANCIENT PAGODA. 
135 
cient Hindoo architecture ; it is of very great antiquity, 
and from its position now entirely deserted, for its 
floors are occupied by the waters of the Ganges, and, 
as far as I have been able to ascertain, there re- 
main no records respecting it. No one appears to 
know when it was built, to whom it was dedicated, 
or why its foundations were laid upon the waters of 
the sacred river, unless it was on account of their 
sanctity. It is surprising how it has resisted the 
force of the current for so great a number of years, 
and that the dislocated towers should still stand, 
pointing, as it were, to their own approaching destruc- 
tion, amid the constant percussion of the stream, 
which is uncommonly violent during the monsoons, 
and maintaining their apparently insecure position in 
spite of those periodical visitations, to the violence of 
which every part of the peninsula is more or less ex- 
posed. It has been surmised, and with probability, 
that this temple was originally erected upon the bank 
of the river, which then offered a firm and unsuspect- 
ed foundation ; but that, in consequence of the con- 
tinual pressure of the stream, the bank had given way 
all round the building, which, on account of the depth 
and solidity of the foundation, stood firm while the 
waters surrounded it, though the towers had been 
partially dislodged by the shock. Or it may be that 
even the foundation sank in some degree with the 
bank, thus projecting the two towers out of the di- 
rect perpendicular, and giving them the very extraor- 
dinary position which they now retain Boats may 
be continually seen passing in and out between these 
submerged porticoes of a former generation, which now 
