From the Caves and Jungles of HindostanBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna), 1831-1891; India -- Description and travel; India -- Religion
The sights around Kandesh, on the way to Thalner and Mhau, are very
picturesque. But the effect is not entirely due to Nature's beauty. Art
has a good deal to do with it, especially in Mussulman cemeteries. Now
they are all more or less destroyed and deserted, owing to the increase
of the Hindu inhabitants around them, and to the Mussulman princes, once
the rightful lords of India, being expelled. Mussulmans of the present
day are badly off and have to put up with more humiliations than even
the Hindus. But still they have left many memorials behind them, and,
amongst others, their cemeteries. The Mussulman fidelity to the dead is
a very touching feature of their character. Their devotion to those
that are gone is always more demonstrative than their affection for
the living members of their families, and almost entirely concentrates
itself on their last abodes. In proportion as their notions of paradise
are coarse and material, the appearance of their cemeteries is poetical,
especially in India. One may pleasantly spend whole hours in these
shady, delightful gardens, amongst their white monuments crowned with
turbans, covered with roses and jessamine and sheltered with rows of
cypresses. We often stopped in such places to sleep and dine. A cemetery
near Thalner is especially attractive. Out of several mausoleums in a
good state of preservation the most magnificent is the monument of the
family of Kiladar, who was hanged on the city tower by the order of
General Hislop in 1818. Four other mausoleums attracted our attention
and we learned that one of them is celebrated throughout India. It is a
white marble octagon, covered from top to bottom with carving, the
like of which could not be found even in Pere La Chaise. A Persian
inscription on its base records that it cost one hundred thousand
rupees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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