Note 150 — PART I.—DESCRIPTION.

Terry mentions only two buildings at Mándu. One was the house of the Mughal, apparently Báz Bahádur’s palace, which he describes as large and stately, built of excellent stone, well squared and put together, taking up a large compass of ground. He adds: We could never see how it was contrived within, as the king’s wives and women were there.150 The only other building to which Terry refers, he calls “The Grot.” Of the grot, which is almost certainly the pleasure-house Nílkanth, whose Persian inscriptions have been quoted above, Terry gives the following details: To the Mughal’s house, at a small distance from it, belonged a very curious grot. In the building of the grot a way was made into a Appendix II. The Hill Fort of Mándu. History The Mughals, a.d. 1570–1720. firm rock which showed itself on the side of the hill canopied over with part of that rock. It was a place that had much beauty in it by reason of the curious workmanship bestowed on it and much pleasure by reason of its coolness.151 Besides the fountain this grot has still one of the charmingly cool and murmuring scallopped rillstones where, as Terry says, water runs down a broad stone table with many hollows like to scallop shells, in its passage over the hollows making so pretty a murmur as helps to tie the senses with the bonds of sleep.