Note 494 — Chapter III · PATHAN STYLE.

Gen. Cunningham found an inscription on the wall recording that twenty-seven temples of the Hindus had been pulled down to provide materials for this mosque (‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. i. p. 176). This, however, proves little, unless we know what the temples were like which were destroyed for this purpose. Twenty-seven temples like those at Khajurâho, excepting the Ganthai, would not provide pillars for one half the inner court. One temple like that at Sadri would supply a sufficiency for the whole mosque, and though the latter is more modern, we have no reason for supposing that similar temples may not have existed before Mahomedan times.