edded Shiva her father slighted him, not knowing who he was,
for the mighty god had wooed and won her under the disguise of a mere
ascetic mendicant, and she made atonement by casting herself into the
sacrificial fire, which consumed her--the prototype of all pious Hindu
widows who perform _Sati_--in the presence of gods and Brahmans. Shiva,
maddened with grief, gathered up the bones of his unfortunate consort
and danced about with them in a world-shaking frenzy. Her scattered
bones fell to earth, and wherever they fell the spot became sacred and a
temple sprang up in her honour. One of her elbows fell on the banks of
the Sipra at Ujjain, and few shrines enjoy greater or more widespread
fame than the great temple of Maha-Kal, consecrated to her worship and
that of Shiva. Its wealth was fabulous when it was looted and destroyed
by Altamsh and his Pathan Mahomedans in 1235. The present buildings are
for the most part barely 200 years old, and remarkable chiefly for the
insistency with which the _lingam_ and the bull, the favourite symbols
of Shiva, repeat themselves in shrine after shrine. But it attracts
immense numbers of pilgrims, especially in every twelfth year, when they
flock in hundreds of thousands to Ujjain and camp as near as possible to
the river. The peculiarity of the Ujjain festival is that, in memory of
the form which Shiva took on when he wooed Uma, it attracts a veritable
army of Sanyasis, or mendicants, sometimes as many as fifty thousand,
from all parts of India. Seldom, except at the great Jaganath festivals
at Puri, is a larger congregation seen of weird and almost inhuman
figures; some clothed solely with their long unkempt hair, some with
their bodies smeared all over with white ashes, and the symbol of their
favourite deity painted conspicuously on their foreheads; some
displaying ugly sores or withered limbs as evidence of lifelong
mortification of the flesh; some moving as if in a dream and entirely
lost to the world's realities; some with frenzied eyes shouting and
brandishing their instruments of self-torture; some with a repulsive
leer and heavy sensuous jowls affecting a certain coquetry in the
ritualistic adornment of their well-fed bodies.

Chandragupta I., the founder of the great dynasty which Hindus extol
above all others, was only a petty chieftain by birth, but he was
fortunate enough to wed a lady of high lineage, who could trace a
connection with the ancient Maurya house of Magadha,