Q) Write a short note on The Palace of Maya and the Assembly Hall at

Hastinapur.

The story of the very construction of the Indraprastha palace makes for a significant
and telling episode. Maya introduced himself as a Vishvakarman (the divine
architect of the Gods) of the asuras. He was said to have architectural abilities that
are unfathomable by our modern standards. True to his name and upon the orders
of Krishna, Maya builds a spellbinding palace for the Pandavas.
Radiant and divine, the palace had a superb colour like the fire, or the Sun, or the
moon. Challenging as it were with its splendour the luminous splendour of the sun, it
shone divinely forth, as though on fire, with divine effulgence.
It stood covering the sky like a mountain or monsoon cloud, long, wide, smooth,
faultless, and dispelled fatigue. Made with the best materials, garlanded with gem-
encrusted walls, filled with precious stones and treasures, it was built well by the
Vishvakarma. Maya imparted the matchless beauty to it.
Inside the hall Maya built a peerless lotus pond, covered with beryl leaves and
lotuses with gem-studded stalks, filled with lilies and water plants and inhabited by
many flocks of fowl. Turtles and fishes adorned it, and blossoming lotuses
embellished it. The water was not muddy and it was plentiful in all seasons; and the
pearl-drop flowers that covered it were stirred by a breeze. Some kings who came
there and saw it thick with precious stones and gems did not recognise it for a pond
and fell into it. Around the hall stood trees that were always in bloom. Everywhere
they were fragrant groves and lotus ponds made beautiful by wild geese, ducks and
chakra birds. The wind carried the fragrance of flowers on land or on water and
fanned the Pandavas with it.
In general, the palace seems to supersede the quotidian laws of nature with its
perennial and inexhaustible pools and trees. It is as if Nature has been mastered by
Maya’s architectural genius!