=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[4.19.50] 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.[4.19.51] 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,[4.19.52] the place of the nativity of Krishna, present to his imagination; for though the groves of Vindra,[4.19.53] in which Kanhaiya disported with the Gopis, no longer resound to the echoes of his flute; though the waters of the Yamuna[4.19.54] 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! It was in the reign of Aurangzeb that the pastoral divinity was exiled from Vraj, that classic soil which, during a period of two thousand eight hundred years, had been the sanctuary of his worshippers. He had been compelled to occasional flights during the visitations of Mahmud and the first dynasties of Afghan invaders; though the more tolerant of the Mogul kings not only reinstated him, but were suspected of dividing their faith between Kanhaiya and the prophet. Akbar was an enthusiast in the mystic poetry of Jayadeva, which paints in glowing colours the loves of Kanhaiya and Radha, in which lovely personification the refined Hindu abjures all sensual interpretation, asserting its character of pure spiritual love.[4.19.55]