Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/241

 BATHING IN THE SACRED POOLS 197 their ablutions. In this they have attained a very high degree of art, so that Mohammedans, when they see them, wonder at them, and are unable to describe them, much less to construct anything like them. They build them of great stones of an enormous bulk, joined to each other by sharp and strong cramp-irons, in the form of steps or terraces, like so many ledges; and these terraces run all around the pond, reaching to a height of more than a man's stature. On the surface of the stones between two terraces they construct stair- cases rising like pinnacles. Thus the first steps or ter- races are like roads leading round the pond, and the pinnacles are steps leading up and down. If ever so many people descend to the pond whilst others ascend, they do not meet each other, and the road is never blocked up, because there are so many terraces, and the ascending person can always turn aside to another terrace than that on which the descending people go. By this arrangement all troublesome thronging is avoided. In Multan there is a pond which the Hindus worship by bathing themselves, if they are not prevented. The Brihat-Samhita of Varahamihira relates that in Thane- sar there is a pond which the Hindus visit from afar to bathe in its water. Eegarding the cause of this custom, they say that the waters of all the other holy ponds visit this particular pond at the time of an eclipse. Therefore, if a man washes in it, it is as if he had washed in every single one of all of them. Then Vara- hamihira continues: " People say that if it were not