Papers relating to a sanatarium upon Mount Parisnath.

  • Bengal (India). Public Works Department
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers relating to a sanatarium upon Mount Parisnath. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    secluded nook, in which the temple stands, to attract the eye of an architect as a convenient station for a large building, but it is exactly such a place as the hermit would select for his hut in shelter from the Northern and Western blasts. Though I could find no vestiges of ruin about, I was told that the same station had held a temple before this modern one was erected by the Juggut-Sdt of Moorshedabad. The la- bor of carrying large blocks of marble to the summit of the mountain, sufficiently indicates the zeal and perseverance of the enthusiastic Jainas. I have described the singular appearance of the small white erec- tions which adorn the pinnacles of the mountain: these are twenty in number, called by the neighbouring inhabitants Goomtees, by the pil- grims and other Jainas with whom I conversed, Chibootrs or Tooks. As there are not so many actual peaks, many of these buildings stand in less conspicuous points of the ridge: none of the pinnacles, however, which at a distance look like arrows aimed at the sky, are without this stamp of human industry; and it was to me, as I looked at some of the steep places, a matter of astonishment that brick-layers could have pursued their labors on such dangerous eminences. On the day I mounted the hill, although the breeze was gentle in the valleys below, there was a stormy wind on the summit, against which I was glad to shelter myself behind the goomtee that stands by the side of the path or under the lee-ward brow of the mountain. Each goomtee is a solid pile of brickwork, varying in height and size according to the facility its station afforded to the builders—the largest does not exceed eight feet in height, and the same in length and breadth; some appeared not to be larger than one-fourth of these dimensions. In each of these buildings is a small recess, on the flat of which is marked the print of a foot, revered as the churun (or last footmark upon earth) of the Tirthankar, whose name is engraved beneath. Upon every goomtee near the churun an inscription certifies the date of its consecration, uAstf hapit Shoogul Chund Juggut-Set, Maugh Soodit, Tirotsi, Sumbut 1825”—the 13th day of the second half (or the 28th day) of the month of Maugh, 1825, Sumbut, (A. D. 1768.) I should here state (as all my readers may not be equally conver- sant in original antiquities) that the Jainas who were originally pure