(Her kindling breath gives life to works sublime;)
With downcast looks of mingled grief and shame,
She heaved the uncertain sigh, and follow’d Time [781].
Wrapt in amazement o’er the mouldering pile,
I saw Oblivion pass with giant stride;
And while his visage wore Pride’s scornful smile,
Haply thou know’st, then tell me, whose I cried,
Whose these vast domes that ev’n in ruin shine?
I reck not whose, he said: they now are mine.
Shall we abandon them to cold ‘oblivion’; or restore them to a name already mentioned, Samprati, or Swampriti, the Shah Jahan[[5]] of a period two centuries before the Christian era, and to whom the shrine in Kumbhalmer is ascribed? Of one thing there is no doubt, which is, that both are Jain, and of the most ancient models: and thus advertised, the antiquary will be able to discriminate between the architectural systems of the Saivas and the Jains, which are as distinct as their religions.