Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s1.72

v2.c27.s1.72

Nāthdwāra.—This is the most celebrated of the fanes of the Hindu Apollo. Its etymology is ‘the portal (dwara) of the god (nath), of the same import as his more ancient shrine of Dwarka at the ‘world’s end.’ Nathdwara is twenty-two [thirty] miles N.N.E. of Udaipur, on the right bank of the Banas. Although the principal resort of the followers of Vishnu, it has nothing very remarkable in its structure or situation. It owes its celebrity entirely to the image of Krishna, said to [522] be the same that has been worshipped at Mathura ever since his deification, between eleven and twelve hundred years before Christ.² As containing the representative of the mildest of the gods of Hind, Nathdwara is one of the most frequented places of pilgrimage, though it must want that attraction to the classical Hindu which the caves of Gaya, the shores of the distant Dwarka, or the pastoral Vraj,³ the place of the nativity of Krishna, present to his imagination ; for though the groves of Vindra,⁴ in which Kanhaiya disported with the Gopis, no longer resound to the echoes of his flute; though the waters of the Yamuna¹ are daily polluted with the blood of the sacred kine, still it is the holy land of the pilgrim, the sacred Jordan of his fancy, on whose banks he may sit and weep, as did the banished Israelite of old, the glories of Mathura, his Jerusalem!