Travels in India (Tavernier) 21.1.7

21.1.7

About 500 paces from the town, in a north-western direction, there is a mosque where you see several Muhammadan tombs, of which some are of a very beautiful design. The most beautiful are placed each in the middle of a garden enclosed by walls which have openings of half a foot square, through which the passers-by can see them. The most considerable of all is like a great square pedestal, each face of which is about forty paces long. In the middle of this platform you see a column of 32 to 35 feet in height, all of a piece, and which three men could with difficulty embrace. It is of sandstone, so hard that I could not scratch it with my knife. It terminates in a pyramid, and has a great ball on the point, and below the ball it is encircled by large beads. All the sides of this tomb are covered with figures of animals cut in relief in the stone, and it has been higher above the ground than it now appears; several of the old men who guard some of these tombs having assured me that since fifty years it has subsided more than 30 feet. They add that it is the tomb of one of the kings of Bhutan, who was interred there after he had left his country to conquer this kingdom, from which he was subsequently driven by the descendants of Tamerlane. It is from this kingdom of Bhutan that they bring musk, and I shall give a description of it in Book III.