CHAPTER 9.
The Great Iconoclast--Troops routed by Hornets--The Rani of Garha-- Hornets' Nests in India.
On the 23rd,[1] we came on nine miles to Sangrampur, and, on the 24th, nine more to the valley of Jabera,[2] situated on the western extremity of the bed of a large lake, which is now covered by twenty- four villages.

The waters were kept in by a large wall that united two hills about four miles south of Jabera.

This wall was built of great cut freestone blocks from the two hills of the Vindhiya range, which it united.

It was about half a mile long, one hundred feet broad at the base, and about one hundred feet high.

The stones, though cut, were never, apparently, cemented; and the wall has long given way in the centre, through which now falls a small stream that passes from east to west of what was once the bottom of the lake, and now is the site of so many industrious and happy little village communities.[3] The proprietor of the village of Jabera, in whose mango grove our tents were pitched, conducted me to the ruins of the wall; and told me that it had been broken down by the order of the Emperor Aurangzeb.[4] History to these people is all a fairy tale; and this emperor is the great destroyer of everything that the Muhammadans in their fanaticism have demolished of the Hindoo sculpture or architecture; and yet, singular as it may appear, they never mention his name with any feelings of indignation or hatred.
With every scene of his supposed outrage against their gods or their temples, there is always associated the recollection of some instance of his piety, and the Hindoos' glory--of some idol, for instance, or column, preserved from his fury by a miracle, whose divine origin he is supposed at once to have recognized with all due reverence.
At Bheragarh,[5] the high priest of the temple told us that Aurangzeb and his soldiers knocked off the heads, arms, and noses of all the idols, saying that 'if they had really any of the godhead in them, they would assuredly now show it, and save themselves'.