VIZAGAPATAM.
stone channel to refresh weary pilgrims. At frequent intervals are images of the various Hindu gods in little niches, and on festival days the steps are lighted from top to bottom. The steps eventually reach the narrow mouth of the glen, and here the path is barred by a bold portal called Hanumán's gate, by the side of which the rivulet which passes clown the glen is led into two pools where pilgrims bathe before they continue the ascent. This gate was apparently part of the fortifications which in former days guarded the temple and other remains of which may be traced on the high ground surrounding it. Tradition says that these included as many as 24 bastions.
Passing through Hanumán's gate, the pilgrim traverses a narrow part of the glen where the rivulet is led through pipes and channels over several artificial cascades surrounded by more sculptures of the gods, and at length reaches the amphitheatre in which, on a terrace partly cut out of the hill-side, stands the temple itself.
The local sthala purána contains a mythical account of the foundation of the building which relates the well-known story of how the demon Hiranya-Kasyapa, furious with his son Prahláda's devotion to his pet aversion Vishnu, had the boy thrown into the sea and Simhachálam hill placed on top of him; how Vishnu in his man-lion incarnation went to the youth's rescue, stood on one side of the hill and tipped it up so that the boy could crawl out on the other; and how Prahláda in his gratitude founded this shrine.
The exact age of the temple is not known, but it contains an inscription, dated as far back as 1098-99 A.D., of the Chóla king: Kulóttunga I who conquered the Kalinga territories (see p. 27), and it must thus have been a place of importance even then. Another inscription shows that a queen of the Velanándu chief Gonka III (1137-56) covered the image with gold; a third says that the Eastern Ganga king Narasimha I built the central shrine, the mukhamandapam, the nátyamandapam, and the enclosing verandah in black stone in 1267-68; and the many other grants inscribed on its walls (the Government Epigraphist's lists for 1.899 give no less than 125 of these) make it a regular repository of the history of the district. The records left here by the victorious Krishna Déva of Vijayanagar have been referred to on p. 28 above.
Architecturally the temple apparently deserves high praise.Europeans are not admitted within the central enclosure, but this is said to contain a square shrine surmounted by a high tower, a portico in front with a smaller tower above it, a square sixteen-
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