Note 2 — PART I.—DESCRIPTION.

From the Jaház Mehel the road winds through fields and woods, gemmed with peafowl and droll with monkeys, among scattered palaces mosques and tombs, some shapely some in heaps, about a mile south to the walled enclosure of the lofty domed tomb of the establisher of Mándu’s greatness, Hoshang Sháh Ghori (a.d. 1405–1432). Though the badly-fitted joinings of the marble slabs of the tomb walls are a notable contrast to the finish of the later Mughal buildings, Hoshang’s tomb, in its massive simplicity and dim-lighted roughness, is a solemn and suitable resting-place for a great Pathán warrior. Along the west of the tomb enclosure runs a handsome flat-roofed colonnade. The pillars, which near the base are four-sided, pass through an eight-sided and a sixteen-sided belt into a round upper shaft. The round shaft ends in a square under-capital, each face of which is filled by a group of leafage in outline the same as the favourite Hindu Singh-múkh or horned face. Over the entwined leafy horns of this moulding, stone brackets support heavy stone beams, all Hindu in pattern.2 Close to the east of Hoshang’s tomb is Hoshang’s Appendix II. The Hill Fort of Mándu. Description. Jámá Masjid or Great Mosque, built of blocks of red limestone. Hoshang’s mosque is approached from the east through a massive domed gateway and across a quadrangle enclosed on the east north and south by wrecked colonnades of pointed arches. The west is filled by the great pointed arches of the mosque in fair repair. On the roof of the mosque from a thick undergrowth of domelets rise three lofty domes.3