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Rh crown upon the red stone; and the graceful bells sculptured in the balconies are like a ‘cummerbund’ around the waist of the majestic tower. The lettering on the upper portions has to be made out by using a telescope.” The Kootub does not stand now in all the integrity of its original structure. It was struck by lightning, and had to be repaired by the Emperor Feroz Shah in 1368.

In 1503 the Minar happened to be again injured, and was repaired by the orders of Secunder Lodi, the reigning sovereign, a man of great taste and a munificent patron of learning and the arts.

Three hundred years after its reparation by Secunder Lodi, in the year 1803, a severe earthquake seriously injured the pillar, and its dangerous state having been brought to the notice of the British Government on their taking possession of the country, they liberally undertook its repair. These repairs were brought to a close in twenty-five years. The old cupola of Feroz Shah, or of Secunder Lodi, that was standing in 1794, having fallen down, had been substituted by a plain, octagonal red-stone pavilion. To men of artistic taste this had appeared a very unfitting head-piece for the noble column, so it was taken down by the orders of Lord Hardinge in 1847, and the present stone-work put up in its stead. The condemned top now lies on a raised plot of ground in front, as shown resting on the platform on the right-hand side in the engraving.

Now, as to the origin of the Kootub, a subject on which much speculation has been wasted.

Theories professing a Hindoo origin are maintained by one party: theories professing its Mohammedan origin are propounded by the other. The Hindoo party believes the Minar to have been built by a Hindoo prince for his daughter, who wished to worship the rising sun and to view the waters of the Jumna from the top of it every morning. The Mohammedan party repudiates this as an outrageous paradox, and would have the Kootub taken for the unmistakable Mazinah of the Musjeed-i-Kootub-ul-Islam. “No man who sees the Minar can mistake it for a moment to be any other than a thoroughly Mohammedan building—Mohammedan in design, and