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Rh of mountains, the worship of which was a nucleus round which the speculations of Vedic seers accumulated. Whether the location of Mandara and Kailāsa in the Himālayas was the original one, or whether the early Aryans brought their own mountain worship into India, is a subject for speculation. But the ancient worship of mountains is still evidenced in popular Hinduism, and on every prominent hill-top in India one can expect to find a shrine, while many specially sacred hills are tirths, or places of pilgrimage, and have become, like Benares, Bhuvanēshyar, and other places, "cities of the gods." This is especially the case in the Jain community, whose most sacred places are the hills of Shatrunjaya, near Palitāna in Gujerat; Girnar, in the south of the Kāthiawar peninsula in the same province; and Parasnath, the highest point of a hilly range south of Rājmahal, in Bengal. The peculiarity of these Jain cities (Pl. XIX, ) is the extreme exclusiveness of their celestial inhabitants, for no mortals—not even priests—are allowed to sleep within the walls, and no food must be cooked on this holy ground. Before night falls, both priests and pilgrims must leave the gods to their meditations, and watchmen are placed at the gateways to prevent intruders disturbing them. This special sanctity has had the interesting effect of preserving intact the planning of an ancient Indian city with its numerous wards, in which different classes were grouped together as in separate villages, divided from each other by walled enclosures, which were closed and guarded at night.