CHAPTER V
GARDENS OF THE PLAINS - DELHI
If there is a Paradise on Earth, it is Here, it is Here.
SADI.
Not only the Nightingale in the Rose-bushes sings his hymn
of praise,
But every Thorn is itself a voice of adoration to the Deity.
SADI.
A STRANGE fascination, the very spirit of the age-long capital of India, hovers over the wide, rolling campagna, the sandy fields and thorny scrub, the gaunt brown domes of ruined tombs, the half-submerged mosques, forts, and palaces, which lie between the Jumna river-bed and the red sunbaked rocks of the famous Ridge which runs from Ajmeer northward until it dies away beyond the plains of Delhi.
No other capital can boast of so long continued a history beginning with King Yudisthara, the central hero of the Mahabharata, whose city, now known as Purana Kila (the Old Fort), marks the south-western angle of the capital of the English-Aryan King-Emperor of India.
