The Story of Bhishma and the Great War
For sixty miles outside "the rose-red walls" of modern Delhi, the plain is strewn with ruins. Broken columns and huge masses of masonry lie there, as if they had been tossed about by giants in their play. Here and there is some stone pillar or other monument of special importance. Such is the marble-screened enclosure where a gentle Moslem princess sleeps her last sleep, amidst the bright sunlight and the chasing shadows. Such is the lofty pillar of Asoka, with its inscription, and such is the old walled town of Indraprastha, three or four miles from the gates of the present fortress.
It is a strange old place. The few inhabitants of to-day live, something like the cream in a bowl of milk, in a top layer of streets and houses. The cottage-yard in which one watches rice parching, or clothes being hung out to dry, is made on the roof of an older dwelling, and that perhaps on another. So that after one has rambled awhile through Indraprastha it becomes easy to believe
