KASHMIR 335
eagerly listened to his expositions and evinced friendliness
and love for him.
He was paying every evening a visit to the playground
for some days. Then the young friends escorted him to
Hari Parvat. Hari Parvat is a hill situated about a mile
from the city of Srinagar. The pandits look upon this
hill with great reverence since there is also a temple of
a goddess on one side at its top. They give a religious
significance to a walk round the hill, for which purpose
hundreds of pandits and their women are seen every
morning pouring out of their congested houses. The
morning exercise and the fresh air in the open also
tend to a great extent to counteract the evil effects
upon their health due to the unhealthy vapours of the
dirty city in which they live most of the time. The
stroll and a darshan of the goddess on the hill they
consider as nothing short of a religious duty, since on
each such occasion they can withdraw their minds
entirely from the cares of the world to the thought
of God.
On the other side of the hill is a neatly-built fortress,
once the strong-hold of the old kings of Kashmir. Ramdas
visited the temple of the goddess, who is represented by a
huge rock, flat on the side facing those who go to it for
darshan. This flat surface is covered over by a thick layer of
red paint and decorated with flowers and flower garlands.
There are a few resident pandits inside the temple building
who are the worshippers of the goddess.
He was attracted by the cool and bracing breeze on
top of the hill and spent a night alone on a stone slab
lying about fifty yards in front of the Devi's temple. The
deep love which Amarnath bore for Eamdas made him
display great anxiety about him at this time. He remained
on the hill till evening on the ensuing day. Amarnath
visited him in the morning and arranged for his milk. The
legend goes that the hill was the trysting place of Sapta-