The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.21.1

v3.c30.s1.21.1

Taken all in all, Māndū¹ is of all the fortress cities of India the most magnificent. The plateau on which it stands—an outlying spur of the Vindhyās—rises a thousand feet and more above the plains of Narbadā, its sides steeply scarped and broken by wild chasmal ravines. Crowning its edges and extending over a length of more than 25 miles are battlemented walls of grey basalt, pierced at ten points by arched and vaulted gateways, or rather series of gateways, which guard the steep approaches. Within the walls is a broad expanse of rolling jungle, sparse on the hills, deep and dense in the valleys, interrupted by smiling lakes or dark pools. Pīpal and banyan and teak mingle their shade with the dark *khirnī* and the brilliant 'flame of the forest'; and outstanding among them all are the gaunt misshapen baobab¹ trees which centuries ago the Abyssinian guards of the Mālwa kings probably introduced from Africa. Such is the natural setting amid which the splendid monuments of the Mālwa kings are placed and to which they seem as it were to give solemnity by their own intrinsic beauty. Once the whole plateau within the walls was covered with buildings either of the Muhammadans or of the Paramāras who had occupied Māndū before them. But the vast majority—shops and houses and all small civic structures—are now levelled with the ground; the only ones that have survived the ravages of time and the devastating jungle being the royal palaces or mosques or tombs.