Black excavations of the
subterranean halls, in the coolness of which rich ladies spent
the hottest hours of the day, peer from under dilapidated granite
walls. Further on are broken stairs, dry tanks, waterless fountains,
endless empty yards, marble platforms, and disfigured arches of
majestic porches. All this is overgrown with creepers and shrubs,
hiding the dens of wild beasts. Here and there a well-preserved
wall of some palace rises high above the general wreck, its empty
windows fringed with parasitic plants blinking and staring at us
like sightless eyes, protesting against troublesome intruders. And
still further, in the very centre of the ruins, the heart of the
dead town sends forth a whole crop of broken cypresses, an untrimmed
grove on the place where heaved once so many breasts and clamoured
so many passions.
In 1570 this town was called Shadiabad, the abode of happiness.
The Franciscan missionaries, Adolf Aquaviva, Antario de Moncerotti,
and others, who came here in that very year as an embassy from Goa
to seek various privileges from the Mogul Government, described
it over and over again. At this epoch it was one of the greatest
cities of the world, whose magnificent streets and luxurious ways
used to astonish the most pompous courts of India. It seems almost
incredible that in such a short period nothing should remain of
this town but the heaps of rubbish, amongst which we could hardly
find room enough for our tent.
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