(peepul, or ficus religiosa,) which no Hindoo can root out, or even lop without a deadly sin, soon sows its seeds, and fixes its roots in the joints of the arching, and being of rapid growth at the same time, in a very few years increases its picturesque and antique appearance, and secures its eventual destruction; lastly, no man in this country repairs or completes what his father has begun, preferring to begin something else, by which his own name may be remembered. Accordingly, in Dacca are many fine ruins, which at first impressed me with a great idea of their age. Yet Dacca is a modern city, founded, or at least raised from insignificance under Shah Jehanguire in A.D. 1608; and the tradition of the place is, that these fine buildings were erected by European architects in the service of the then governor. At Benares, the principal temple has an appearance so venerable that one might suppose it to have stood unaltered ever since the Greta Yug, and that Menu and Capila had performed austerities within its precincts. Yet it is historically certain that all the Hindoo temples of consequence in Benares were pulled down by Aurungzebe, the contemporary of Charles the Second, and that the present structure must have been raised since that time. The observatories of Benares, Delhi, and Jyepoor, I heard spoken of in the carelessness of conversation, not only as extremely curious in themselves, (which they certainly are,) but as monuments of the ancient science of the Hindoos. All three, however, are known to be the work of the Raja Jye Singh, who died in 1742.
