Amidst the general decay a few Hindu temples with tall, tapering spires still show a brave front, and the tomb of the Mussulman saint, Shaikh Chilli, built on a slight elevation, rears its marble dome into the air with something of pride; but the rest, as I have said, is meanness and squalor itself. Within the precincts of Shaikh Chilli’s tomb is a school where I saw the boys at their tasks as I passed in to see the place. “What unlucky boys,” thought I, “to be brought up amidst the unwholesome moral atmosphere of a decaying city!” Although there is no present glory or grandeur about Kurukshetra, a visit to it will repay the thoughtful student of Indian history and religion. In an expanse of flat country, from which, however, the blue outlines of the Himalayas may be traced in the distance, the traveller finds, a short way outside Thanesar, a shallow swamp about three miles in circumference and overgrown with weeds. This is the historic lake which, according to General Cunningham, was a sacred place long anterior to the great war; indeed, as far back as the time of the Rig Veda itself. “Can it be possible,” I mused, as I stood beside this weed-covered pool, “that for a hundred generations the affectionate devotion of the Hindu race has consistently and persistently clung to this unattractive bit of water in an open plain?” “And how is it,” I asked myself, “that their piety never adorned its banks with temples (for there are here no ruins worth speaking of), and why is it now so neglected?” Will the reader accompany me round the lake and survey it from all points of view?[109] On the east side are the only important buildings, the largest being a temple of very modern date and no architectural pretensions. It is an ordinary _Mandir_; but has just a slight local character in the fact that it contains five coloured clay statues of the Pandavas, railed off from the too curious or too pious spectator by a strong, rudely constructed railing of bamboos. It rejoices in the possession of a huge iron frying-pan--not less than eight feet in diameter and about nine inches deep--to which my attention was specially directed. This gigantic frying-pan is much in demand on festival days, when the multitude pays to be fed by the Brahmans. A flight of steps leads from the temple into the water, and runs nearly along one-half of the eastern and northern sides of the lake. A causeway on arches extends into the lake and ends in a small temple picturesquely shadowed with trees. Another bridge, now but little above the level of the water, parallel to the causeway just mentioned, leads right across the lake, joining to both east and west banks a small island in the middle, on which that famous bigot, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, erected a diminutive fort to accommodate a small garrison, intrusted with the duty of preventing the Hindus from bathing in their sacred pool.