Handbook for Travellers in India, Burma and Ceylon Including AllBritish India, the Portuguese and French Possessions, and the Indian States

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J. Murray, 1924

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Page 58 - Hundreds of devotees came hither every month to die ; for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that great metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels, ladeu with rich merchandise.
Page 390 - Bailey-gate ! storm, and it ran Surging and swaying all round us, as ocean on every side Plunges and heaves at...
Page cxxxvii - Derby would write it bimself in his excellent language, bearing in mind that it is a female Sovereign who speaks to more than a hundred millions of Eastern people on assuming the direct Government over them, and, after a bloody civil war, giving them pledges which her future reign is to redeem, and explaining the principles of her Government.
Page 91 - The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renown'd, But such as, at this day, to Indians known; In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade, High overarch'd, and echoing walks between...
Page 234 - The light to the central apartment is admitted only through double screens of white marble trellis-work of the most exquisite design, one on the outer and one on the inner face of the walls. In our climate this would produce nearly complete darkness, but in India, and in a building wholly composed of white marble, this was required to temper the glare, which otherwise would have been intolerable.
Page 58 - Asia. It was commonly believed that half a million of human beings was crowded into that labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich with shrines, and minarets, and balconies, and carved oriels, to which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveler could scarcely make his way through the press of holy mendicants and not less holy bulls.
Page 411 - Sacred to the perpetual Memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly Women and Children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the xvth day of July, MDCCCLVII.
Page cv - AD 400 as a mean date — and it certainly is not far from the truth — it opens our eyes to an unsuspected state of affairs to find the Hindus at that age capable of forging a bar of iron larger than any that have been forged even in Europe up to a very late date, and not frequently even now.
Page 524 - Brahma occurs three or four times, and every great god of the Hindu Pantheon finds his place. Some of these are carved with a minute elaboration of detail which can only be reproduced by photography, and may probably be considered as one of the most marvellous exhibitions of human labour to be found even in the patient East.
Page 261 - from its having the figures of two peacocks standing behind it, their tails expanded, and the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones of appropriate colors, as to represent life. The throne itself was six feet long by four feet broad.

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