By-Ways of Bombay | Page 9

of a stone slab,
holding in its right forepaw some animal, which the Gazetteer declares
is an elephant but which more closely resembles a dog. The tiger on the
left of the arch alone abides in its place; the other lies on the ground at
the threshold of the gate. Local wiseacres believe the tiger to have been
the crest of the Killedar who built the gate and to have signified to the
public of those lawless days much the same as the famous escutcheon
in "Marmion," with its legend, "who laughs at me to Death is dight!"
The Saint's gate, so called from the tomb of a "Pir" hidden in the
surrounding growth of prickly pear, is the largest of all the gates and is
formed of splendid slabs of dressed stone, each about 8 feet in length.
On either side of the gateway are rectangular recesses, which were
doubtless used as dwellings or guardrooms by the soldiers in charge of
the gate. Thence the pathway divides; one track, intended for cavalry,
leading round to the north-western side of the hill, and the other for
foot-passengers, composed of rock-hewn steps and passing directly
upwards to the Shivabai gate, where still hangs the great teak-door,
studded with iron spikes, against which the mad elephants of an
opposing force might fruitlessly hurl their titanic bulk.
Leaving for a moment the direct path, which climbs to the crest of the
hill past the Buddhist caves and cisterns, we walk along a dainty terrace
lined with champak and sandalwood trees and passing under a carved
stone gateway halt before the shrine dedicated to Shivaji's family
goddess. The dark inner shrine must have once been a Buddhist cave,
carved out of the wall of rock; and to it later generations added the
outer hall, with its carved pillars of teakwood, which hangs over the

very edge of a precipitous descent. Repairs to the shrine are at present
in progress; and on the day of our visit two bullocks were tethered in
the outer chamber, the materials of the stone-mason were lying here
and there among the carved pillars, and a painfully modern stone wall
is rising in face of the austere threshold of the inner sanctuary. The
lintel of the shrine is surmounted with inferior coloured pictures of
Hindu deities, and two printed and tolerably faithful portraits of the
great Maratha chieftain. "Thence," in the words of the poet, "we turned
and slowly clomb the last hard footstep of that iron crag," and
traversing the seventh and last gate reached the ruined Ambarkhana or
Elephant-stable on the hill top. It is a picture of great desolation which
meets the eye. The fragment of a wall or plinth, covered with rank
creepers, an archway of which the stones are sagging into final
disruption, and many a tumulus of coarse brown grass are all that
remain of the wide buildings which once surrounded the Ambarkhana.
The latter, gray and time-scarred, still rears on high its double row of
arched vaults; but Vandalism, in the guise of the local shepherd and
grass-cutter, has claimed it as her own and has bricked up in the rudest
fashion, for the shelter of goats and kine, the pointed stone arches
which were once its pride.
Another noteworthy feature of the summit of the hill is a collection of
stone cisterns of varying ages, still containing water. The smaller open
cisterns, in which the water is thick and covered with slime, are of
Musalman origin, but there are one or two in other parts of the hill
which clearly date from Buddhist ages and are coeval with the
rock-cells. The most important and interesting of all are four large
reservoirs, supported on massive pillars and hewn out of the side of the
hill, which date from about 1100 A.D., and were in all probability built
by the Yadav dynasty of Deogiri. One of them known as Ganga and
Jamna is full of clear cool water which, the people say, is excellent for
drinking. Here again the hand of the vandal has not been idle; for such
names as Gopal, Ramchandra, etc., are scrawled in English characters
over the face of the chief reservoir-- the holiday work no doubt of
school-boys from Junnar. The presence of these four reservoirs,
coupled with other disappearing clues, proves that between the
Buddhist era and the date of the Musulman conquest, the hill must have

been fortified and held by Hindu chieftains, probably the Yadavas
already mentioned. The purely Musulman remains include the
Ambarkhana, a prayer-wall or Idga, the skeleton of a mosque, with a
delicate flying arch, and a domed tomb. In front of the prayer wall still
stands the stone pulpit from which the moulvis of the fortress preached
and intoned the daily prayers; but neither