History of Bengali Language and Literature c10.s5.78

c10.s5.78

ing language the Rājā, who was a pious man, jotted down notes in verse of what he saw in the Holy City, a hundred years ago. He begins his description of ‘the abode of Çiva,’ as Kāçī is called, with a few poetic lines in which its semicircular shape, as observed from the Ganges, is compared to the crescent moon on the forehead of Çiva. He next gives a short notice of the bathing ghātas—the Parçvnāth ghāta, the Asi ghāta, the Vaidyanāth ghāta, the Nārada Pānde’s ghāta and so on. There were then altogether 53 bathing ghātas at Benares and all of these are faithfully noticed. Though the notes are short, the writer makes them interesting by his witty remarks in many of them. He then proceeds to give a description of the Postās (embankment), the chief amongst which is the Mirer Postā; it is 120 ft. in height and 600 ft. in breadth. Hurriedly taking a note of the great houses, some of which were seven stories high, he gives an account of the Dhārāras or pinnacles. The pinnacle named Çri Madhava Rāyer Dhārārā rises to a height of 172 ft.; at 135 ft. there is a seat for visitors, from which a bird’s-eye view of the City of Benares may be taken. *“Like the cliffs of Mount Sumeru, it appears as if the Dhārārā might pierce the heavens.”* At the time when the Rājā lived at Benares, this Dhārārā was used by the desperate and unhappy as a place for committing suicide. The Rājā has given a list of the people who killed themselves during his time by throwing themselves down from