the waters of the sacred Nerbudda, the only palace now
surviving in Mandu which bears a definite impress of Hinduism. Baz
Bahadur surrendered to the Emperor Akbar in 1562.

At Ahmedabad, on the other hand, the Ahmed Shahi Sultans of Gujerat
found themselves in presence of an advanced form of Hindu civilisation
as soon as they entered into possession of the kingdom which they
snatched from the general conflagration. Whether Ahmedabad, which is
still the modern capital of Gujerat and ranks only second to its
neighbour, Bombay, as a centre of the Indian cotton industry, occupies
or not the exact site of the ancient Karn[=a]vati, Gujerat was a
stronghold of Indian culture long before the Mahomedan invasions.
Architecture especially had reached a very high standard of development
in the hands of what is usually known as the Jaina school. This is a
misnomer, for the school was in reality the product of a period rather
than a sect, though Jainism probably never enjoyed anywhere, or at any
time, such political ascendancy as in Gujerat under its Rashtrakuta and
Solanki rulers from the ninth to the thirteenth century, and seldom has
there been such an outburst of architectural activity as amongst the
Jains of that period. To the present day the _salats_ or builders,
mostly Jains, have in their keeping, jealously locked away in iron-bound
chests in their temples, many ancient treatises on civil and religious
architecture, of which only a few abstracts have hitherto been published
in Gujerati, but, as may be seen at Ahmedabad, in the great Jaina temple
of Hathi Singh, built in the middle of the last century at a cost of one
million sterling, they have preserved something of the ancient
traditions of their craft.

Firishta described Ahmedabad as, in his day, "the handsomest city in
Hindustan and perhaps in the world," and very few Indian cities contain
so many beautiful buildings as those with which Ahmedabad was endowed in
the course of a few decades by its Ahmed Shahi rulers. No one can fail
to admire the wealth of ornamentation and the exquisite workmanship
lavished upon them, though they are not by any means the noblest
monuments of Mahomedan architecture in India. In fact--and herein lies
their peculiar interest--they are Hindu rather than Mahomedan in spirit.
For they were built by architects of the Jaina school, who were just as
ready to work for their Moslem rulers as they had been to work in
earlier times for their Hindu r