potically, and with the lavish expenditure of such untold millions, this mosque and minar may never have answered, even in a single instance, the purposes for which they were so proudly intended. According to their customs and rules, the mosque would probably not be used till completed. The second minar, being unfinished, would very likely prevent the dedication; so that ere another hand could consummate the great design, the death of the founder, the long and fierce wars that followed, and finally the imperial fickleness which chose the banks of the Jumna, eleven miles away, as the site of new Delhi, leading to the utter forsaking of the grand old city, with all its monuments, temples, mosques, and palaces, consigned the Kootub forever to desolation, and after all left it, very likely, a mosque where no prayer was ever offered, and a minaret from whose lofty summit no muezzin's voice ever called the sons of the Koran to their vain devotions.
Though fifteen hundred years have gone over it, the Iron Pillar shows no sign of decay; it is smooth and clean. The metal of which it is composed was so fused and amalgamated that it defies all oxidation, while the characters engraven upon it remain to-day clear and distinct as when they were first cut by the hand of the engraver.
The great antiquity, the enormous size, and the interesting inscriptions upon the pillar of Rajah Dhava have led to great reverence toward it by all Hindoos, and legends are not wanting to account for its origin and position. One tradition is, that it is the veritable club that great Bheema wielded in the battles of the Mahabharata, and which was left standing there by the Pandus after their contest. But the more popular story is, that it is a pillar so long that it pierced the entire depth of the earth, till it rested on the head of the gigantic snake called Vasuki, who supports the world—that its stability was the palladium of Hindoo dominion in India.
Such were some of the magnificent and unique surroundings of the Mogul Court in 1856; and all this, with much more that might be mentioned, they were then about to risk the possession of in a fearful struggle with the white-faced race.
