CHAPTER XI.                                  117

mild swept away their rule from those countries, he
made again the old mosque the place of the Friday-
worship, and the second one was left to decay. At
present it is only a barn-floor, where bunches of Hinna
(Lawsonia inermis) are bound together.

If we now subtract from the above-mentioned num¬
ber of years the hundreds, tens, and units, i.e. the 432
years, as a kind of arbitrary equivalent for the sum of
about 100 years, by which the rise of the Karmatians
preceded our time, we get as the remainder 216,000
years for the time of the end of the Kritayuga, and
about the epoch of the era of the Hijra. How, then,
could wood have lasted such a length of time, and
particularly in a place where the air and the soil are
rather wet ?    God knows best!

The city of Taneshar is  highly venerated  by the The idol of
Hindus.    The idol of that place is called Cakrasvdmin, called
i.e. the owner of the cakra, a weapon which we have sv^amln.
already described (page  114).    It is of bronze, and is
nearly the size of a man.    It is now lying in the hippo¬
drome in Ghazna, together with the Lord of Somanath,
which is a representation of the penis of Mahadeva,
called Linga.    Of Somanath we shall hereafter speak in
the proper place.    This Cakrasvamin is said to have
been made in the time of Bharata as a memorial of wars
connected with this name.

In Inner Kashmir, about two or three days' journey Theidoi
from the capital in the direction towards the mountains Kashmin
of Bolor, there is a wooden idol called Sdradct, which is
much venerated and frequented by pilgrims.

We shall now communicate a whole chapter from the Quotation
book Samhitd relating to  the construction of  idols, samhitaof

. .   ^         .11111                 1              1                 11                               1         1   Varahami-

which Will help the student thoroughly to comprehend hira.
the present subject.

Varahamihira says: "If the figure is made to repre¬
sent Rama the son of Dasaratha, or Bali the son of
Virocana, give it the height of 120 digits," i.e. of idol