Operation In Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Mumbai Circle 1

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society

Page 62

IN THE BOMBAY CIRCLE.
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we were received with much cordiality by an officer, to whose active sympathy and great influence I desire to acknowledge the results accomplished at Oodeypore as almost entirely due. I'was glad to find that the Agents of the search, Mr. Bhagvandas Kevaldas and Mr. Ramchandra Shastri, who had been directed to join me here from Ahmedabad, had arrived some days previously; and next morning I began my work in Oodeypore by an examination of the works which had already been offered to them for purchase.
altitude of the palace buildings forms the back ground. The whole of the centre of the picture is occupied by the majestic pile of the palace of the Maharanas, Bo massive in its proportions, so pure and delicate in its colours and decorations, so high in air, that poet or painter might be forgiven who should take it for the embodiment in marble of the apocalypatic vision of the Holy City, Now Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The town is seen climbing up to the palace, and gathering all about it: and far away on every side the eye rests with quiet satisfaction on the hills that lie round Oodeypore. . . . . Ono chief glory of the place forms no part of this fair scene. It was said a moment ago that the hills behind the palace are neither so near nor so high as to interfere with the commanding effect of the position of the palace itself. Our first afternoon's drive showed us that the palace, which on this side is the last in a line of buildings climbing slowly up from the level of the plain, on the other descends sheer into a lake, whose surpassing loveliness no words can convey to those who have not been privileged to see it. For us, who have seen it, it is a possession for ever. More extensive than the Abu lake, it differs from that, which is fully its equal in simple beauty, in the variety of effect, if I may so speak of which it can boast. In many a distant and retired nook it repeate the effect of supreme repose, and perfect natural beauty, which distinguishes its Abu rival. Where it washes the palace walls and the gates of the city it presents with these the most charming specimen of that intermingling of shadow and substance on which poets love to dwell
"Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away." In the centre of the lake stand those dreams in marble, the water palaces with which the taste and munificence of the monarchs of Mewar have crowned the islands that are there. On one of these palaces Englishmen, so long as England is England, will never fail to gaze with an emotion that owes nothing to its loveliness, great as that loveliness is. It was here that during the Mutiny a company of men, women and children, gathered from far and wide. found an asylum at the hands of the late Maharana. To guard against any