I can almost fancy that the erection of this sun-temple was suggested
by the magnificent sunny prospect which its position commands. It
overlooks the finest view in Kashmir, and perhaps in the known world,
Beneath it lies the paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and
cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all
sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon
the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it
sublime; for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no petty peep into
a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in
breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which
lies beneath "the ken of the wonderful Marttand."
The principal buildings that still exist in Kashmir are entirely
composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking the highest
polish -- a property to which I mainly attribute the beautiful state
of preservation in which some of them at present exist.
Even at first sight one is immediately struck by the strong resemblance
which the Kashmirian colonnades bear to the classic peristyles of
Greece.
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