“…To Iletmish we owe some of the finest Muslim works in India. The Arhai din ka-Jhopra began by Qutab al-Din in AD 1198-99, was also completed by him… - James Tod

Mahratta cunning, engrafted on Muhammadan intolerance, had greatly obscured these institutions. The nation itself was passing rapidly away: the remnant which was left had become a matter of calculation, and their records and their laws partook of this general decay. The nation may recover; the physical frame may be renewed; but the morale of the society must be recast. In this chaos a casual observer sees nothing to attract notice; the theory of government appears, without any of the dignity which now marks our regular system. Whatever does exist is attributed to fortuitous causes—to nothing systematic: no fixed principle is discerned, and none is admitted; it is deemed a mechanism without a plan. This opinion is hasty. Attention to distinctions, though often merely nominal , will aid us in discovering the outlines of a picture which must at some period have been more finished; when real power, unrestrained by foreign influence, upheld a system, the plan of which was original. It is in these remote regions, so little known to the Western world, and where original manners lie hidden under those of the conquerors, that we may search for the germs of the constitutions of European States. A contempt for all that is Asiatic too often marks our countrymen in the East: though at one period on record the taunt might have been reversed.

The temple of Vrishabdeva stands isolated in the center of a quadrangular court, the length of which, from east to west, is about one hundred and eighty feet, and the breadth one hundred feet. Along its internal faces are ranges of cells, nineteen on the larger, and ten on each of the smaller sides, each cell being of uniform dimensions…. The whole is of pure white marble, every column, dome, and altar varying in form and ornament, the richness and delicacy of execution being indescribable. Each of the fifty-eight cells merits an entire day’s study, and a first-rate pencil to delineate it. It is asserted that each separate cell was added by wealthy individuals, of various cities and countries, professing the Jain faith, which may account for the great diversity of style and ornament, while the harmony and symmetry of the whole attest that one master-mind must have planned and executed it, except at the south-west angle, where some dissimilarity prevails. The altars are of a chaste and simple design, while money, labour, skill, and taste, have been lavished on the details of the colonnade, wherein each of the columnar rules of Jain architecture has its example. Each cell contains its statue decided to the particular object of worship of the person at whose expense it was raised, and inscriptions recording the period of erection are carved on the inner lintel of every doorway…

The temple of Somnat’h stood in the center of an immense quadrangular court, defended by its own lofty battlements. The subordinate shrines, which, like satellites, heightened the splendour of the ‘Lord of the Moon,’ are now levelled with the earth, and mosques, walls, and the habitations of mortals, have been raised from their debris. The extent of the court may be estimated by the simple fact, that the nearest of the reservoirs for the lustrations of Bal and his priests is full one hundred yards distant from the shrine. The great mosque, called the Joomma Musjid, must have absorbed the materials of at least five of these minor shrines; for its five vaulted cupolas, with all their appendages, are purely Hindu, and the enormous triple-colonnaded court, in which it stands, must have cost a dozen more. Such was and such is the shrine of Somnat’h, even now a noble object, yet how much grander in the high and palmy days of Hinduism, with all its ministrant appendages!… Nothing can surpass the beauty of the site chosen for the temple, which stands on a projecting rock, whose base is washed by the ocean. Here, resting on the skirt of the mighty waters, the vision lost in their boundless expanse, the votary would be lulled to a blissful state of repose by the monotonous roar of the waves. Before him is the bay, extending to Billawul, its golden sands kept in perpetual agitation by the surf, in bold and graceful curvature; it is unrivalled in India, and although I have since seen many noble bays, from that of Penzance to Salernum, perhaps the finest in the world, with all its accessories of back-ground, and in all the glory of closing day, none ever struck my imagination more forcibly than that of Puttun. The port and headland of Billawul, with its dark walls raised as a defence against the pirates of Europe, form a noble terminating point of view, and form which the land trends northwards to Dwarica. The peaks of Girnar, twenty coss distant (N. 7° E.), would raise the sublimest feelings, or if he chooses more tranquil scenes, the country around presents objects of interest, the plains being well-wooded, and diversified both by nature and art. Such is the chief temple of paganism, the destruction of which, in A.H. 416 (A.D. 1008), was deemed by the Sultan of Ghizni an act of religious duty.