Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/137

Rh with narrow, winding passages, crowded together like a rabbit-warren. The Khwābgāh, or "Dream Chamber," of the Emperor Akbar in his splendid palace at Fatehpur-Sīkri, where the monarch and his ladies enjoyed a siesta, is a square of less than fifteen feet. Of the palace of Fīroz Shāh Tughlaq, built at Delhi in the latter half of the fourteenth century, we are told by a contemporary native annalist that "one of the arrangements was that any person, having a general acquaintance with the palace, after passing through several apartments, would arrive at the centre. This central apartment under the palace was very dark, and the passages were so narrow that if the attendants did not guide the visitor he would never be able to find his way out. Indeed, it is said that a servant once went into that place, and after he had been missing for some days, the guards went in search of him and rescued him from the darkness." The same model was adopted by the princes of Rājputāna, where the entrances of their forts are narrow passages capable of defence against a host. In the palace of the Mahārāna of Udaipur there is not a room into which a moderately sized man could enter without stooping, and access is gained by steep staircases. Louis Rousselet describes the palace at Baroda as "entered by a dark staircase, nearly perpendicular, and so narrow that I could easily touch both walls with my elbows. It was closed at the summit by a heavy trap-door, which a servant opened and then closed behind us. 'How,' I asked myself, 'can people who, as I am informed, live surrounded by almost supernatural luxury, condemn themselves to go up and down such a break-neck affair?' The captain explained the reason of this singularity. The Mahratta nobles came into this country as usurpers; mere peasants' sons, they had expelled the ancient nobility. Being exposed to the vengeance of the dispossessed land-