The Paramara kings were great builders of magnificent cities, lakes, and temples. Bhoja rebuilt the city of Dhara. A Hoysala grant from Belur, dated 1117 A. D., records that “Dhara was made prosperous by Bhoja.’ Since his reign, it had enjoyed the position of the chief city of Malwa, even down to the time of the Muhammadan rule.
Twenty miles south of the city of Bhopal are the remains of the ancient city of Bhojpur. Tradition ascribes its foundation to Bhoja. Not far from it, to the west, is the Bhojpur lake, which was once the greatest of its kind in India. The tradition runs that Bhoja was once attacked by a malady of the severest type, which threatened his life.- No physician in the kingdom was able to cure him, but at last a recluse prescribed a remedy which, if properly applied, would definitely assure his recovery. The prescription was that the king should take a long course of baths in water supplied daily by three hundred and sixty five streams, and expert engineers were therefore sent all round the Vindhya hill to discover a place that should fulfil these conditions. After much search, the present site of the lake was discovered, which was fed by three hundred and fifty-nine springs and the deficiency in the required number was subsequently made up by turning either the courses of the river Kaliasot and its tributaries.
On the ancient shore of the lake lies a number of fiat blocks of stones. The people of the locality still believe that they were used as a boat-house by Bhoja, who, every morning used to sail across the lake in order to pay his obeisance at the Buddhist caves on the opposite shore. The Bhojpur lake stands to day as a testimony to the extent of the engineering skill and workmanship achieved by the people of Malwa under the magnificent rule of the Paramaras.
The king UdayAditya founded the city of Udayapur, thirty miles to the north of Bhilsa. Udayapur is now once again only a small village, but there remain numerous traces of its ancient glory.
The king Devapala built the city of Depalpur, now merely a village, about thirty miles to the north-west of Indore. He also excavated a lake, known as Depal-sagar, at one end of that village, which is now a fine sheet of water covering a space of several square miles.
During the happy reign of the Paramaras, a large number of superb and magnificent temples were built in Malwa, But, unfortunately, only a few specimens of them remain to us now. After the fall of the Paramaras, Malwa became an important centre of the Muhammadans, and the latter, in order to obtain materials for the construction of their mosques, demolished many Hindu temples. The Muhammadan historians present us with a vivid description of how lltu-Tamish sacked and ravaged the great temple of Mahakoshla at Ujjain, the object of the veneration and respect of the whole of Hindu India.
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