THE WORLD'S MOST EXQUISITE BUILDING
A Mogul ruler who did things was Shah Jahan, and he came of a race not
content with ordinary achievements. His grandfather, Akbar, was probably
the greatest personage ever born in India. He it was "whose saddle was
his throne, the canopy of which was the vaulted dome of heaven." Akbar
made Eastern history, made it fast, blazoning it with proud records of
conquest and empire extension. Akbar was the grandest man who ever ruled
Central India, and it was he who developed the Mogul Empire to the
loftiest importance it attained.
Shah Jahan embellished the empire with noble structures, and his impulse
for building amounted to mania. Time annulled Akbar's achievements, but
those of his grandson stand to-day, and the structures of his era are
beautiful enough to attract admirers from every corner of the earth. A
famous critic once said that Shah Jahan built like a giant and finished
like a jeweler. His works have made Agra, of all cities in India, the
place of unrivaled interest.
[Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA]
Agra's Taj Mahal is the most exquisite building ever erected by the
hands of man, and is a romance as deftly wrought in marble as any writer
ever fashioned in words. It marks a great man's love for a
woman--Arjamand Banu Begum, his wife. Shah Jahan was a Mohammedan despot
who led a magnificent life, and had other wives; but in his eyes the
peer of her sex was Arjamand. When she died in giving birth to a child,
he declared he would rear to her memory a mausoleum so perfect that it
would make men marvel for all time. And this he accomplished. More
poetry and prose have been written about the Taj, with more allusions to
it as a symbol of love, than of any other creation marking human
affection--and the secret probably lies in the fact that all the world
loves a lover.
Arjamand had many titles of rank and endearment, but poets like Sir
Edwin Arnold preferred to speak of her as Mumtaz-i-Mahal, meaning the
"Exalted of the Palace," when extolling the charms of this splendid
niece of Nur-Mahal, who likewise had been famed for beauty and charity.
Shah Jahan ruled from 1628 to 1658, and had been on the throne only two
years when death took from him his adored Arjamand. Then came the
resolve to erect to her memory a monument that might measure his love
and grief. Since Akbar's time, the best architects, artists, and skilled
workmen of India, Persia, and Arabia had been attracted to Agra and
neighboring Delhi. All were summoned to Shah Jahan's court, and the
resources of his empire placed at their disposal. The Taj,
consequently, was not the creation of a single master mind, but the
consummation of a great art epoch. Its construction was commenced four
years after Arjamand's demise.
The bereft emperor had appointed a council of great architects of India
to guide the work. Drawings of celebrated structures of the world,
especially those in Moslem lands, were studied. More than one European
was attracted to the Mogul court, and it is believed that Geronimo
Verroneo, who had journeyed from Italy, laid several plans before Shah
Jahan. There are records at Agra showing that certain suggestions of the
Italian were adopted, but it is common belief that the general design
was the recommendation of a Turkish or Persian architect named Ustad
Isa.
In keeping with an old Tartar custom, a garden was chosen as the site of
the tomb--a garden planted with flowers and fragrant shrubs, emblems of
life, and solemn cypresses, emblems of death and eternity. In Mogul days
such a garden was maintained as a pleasure ground during the owner's
lifetime, and used for his interment when dead.
"And she who loved her garden, lieth now
Lapped in a garden.
And all this for Love!"
The laborers came from many parts of the world--the chief masons from
Northern India and Bagdad, the dome builders from Asiatic Turkey, and
the mosaic artists from Persia and probably Italy. Every section of
India and Central Asia was drawn upon for materials. The marble,
spotless in purity, was brought from Jeypore, 300 miles away, on the
backs of elephants and camels or by bullock carts. The red sandstone was
contributed by Fathpu Sikrij, the jasper by the Punjab, the crystal and
jade by China. The turquoises came from Tibet and the Red Sea, the
sapphires and lapis lazuli from Ceylon, coral and cornelian from Arabia,
onyx and amethysts from Persia, and the diamonds from Bundelkund.
It engaged the unceasing labor of 20,000 men for seventeen years to
complete the Taj; and like that other great tomb, the Cheops Pyramid in
Egypt, it was reared chiefly by forced labor, unpaid and uncared for,
and thereby produced great suffering and mortality. This is the chief
blemish attaching to the project that gave to art the mausoleum
overlooking the Jumna.
According to native accounts the cost of the Taj was lakhs of rupees
having to-day a value of $20,000,000; and local tradition affirms that
not half this sum was ever paid by the emperor--this is a blot upon the
sincerity and strict uprightness of the magnificent grandson of Akbar.
The Taj garden is perhaps a half mile square, and is surrounded by a
strikingly beautiful wall of masonry. It is an orderly wilderness of
rich vegetations, to be found only in Asia, and the deep greens and rich
browns of the avenues of foliage unquestionably accentuate the whiteness
of the Temple of Death. As the garden helps the tomb, so the tomb gives
expression to the garden.
The great gateway of red sandstone, whose roof is adorned by Moorish
arches and pavilions, is in itself one of India's most perfect
buildings. From its summit a perfect view of the Taj is had, with the
Jumna flowing sluggishly beneath its marble platform; and from there the
grounds are spread before the visitor in a perfect panorama. The paved
avenues, all leading to the magnificent pile, miles of marble acqueducts
filled with ornamental fish, playing fountains--all breathe the
superlative of art, every fluttering leaf whispers of the East.
Not by its size is Arjamand's tomb commanding, for its dimensions are
very moderate. Imagine a plinth of flawless marble, 313 feet square, and
rising eighteen feet from the ground--that is the foundation of the
wondrous structure. The Taj is 186 feet square, with dome rising to an
extreme height of 220 feet; that is all. At each corner of the plinth
stands a tapering minaret rearing its crown 137 feet;
"--four tall court ladies
tending their princess."
[Illustration: ALABASTER SCREEN ENCLOSING ARJAMAND'S TOMB, TAJ MAHAL]
No building carries the idea of personality further than the Taj, a
feminine personality, as it should be, for it contains no suggestion of
the rugged grandeur of a tomb for a great man. The Taj is the antithesis
of Akbar's mausoleum, of the Parthenon, of Napoleon's resting-place,
of Grant's robust mausoleum on the Hudson. A sepulcher fashioned after
ordinary architectural canons can only be conventional: the Taj is
different from all other buildings in the world; it is symbolical of
womanly grace and purity--is the jewel, the ideal itself; is India's
noble tribute to the grace of Indian womanhood, a tribute perhaps to the
Venus de Milo of the East.
The grace of the Taj, as do the achievements of every form of perfect
art, rests in its simplicity. A spectator marvels that so much beauty
can come from so little apparent effort. Yet nothing is wanting, there
is nothing in excess; we cannot alter a single stone and claim that the
result would be better. And Oriental designers, working for an Eastern
despot, might easily have struck a jarring note and rendered the Taj
garish--the wonder is that they did not. The Taj consequently is the
objective of most travelers making the pilgrimage to India.
It is easier to tell what the Taj is than to speculate upon the ideals
and motives of its builders, and it should be a brave writer who
attempts to describe it. Kipling, who saw the structure first from the
window of a train nearing Agra, called it "an opal tinted cloud on the
horizon"; and after studying the building at close range he wrote, "Let
those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward
be dumb; ... each must view it for himself with his own eyes, working
out his own interpretation of the sight." Another great English writer
has said, "Words are worthless in describing a building which is
absolutely faultless." And it taxed the talents of Sir Edwin Arnold,
critic and poet, to frame in language an adequate picture of Arjamand's
death couch.
If a man possesses the sentiment of form and proportion, the Taj will
satisfy him. The stately portal seems to harmonize with the grandeur of
an Eastern queen; and the aerial dome, higher than its breadth, rests
upon its base as if possessing no weight, yet is of solid marble. Heroic
in treatment are the quotations from the Koran framing every doorway and
aperture, wrought in inlay or sculptured in relief--and these modify the
pearly monotony of the marble.
One enters reverently the burial-place of Shah Jahan's queen, whose
cenotaph is of the whitest marble, placed in the precise center of the
building, and surrounded by an octagonal screen of alabaster that is
pierced and interwoven like lace. Every foot of the walls, every column
and panel, is elaborately embellished with flowers, leaves, scrolls, and
sentences, and these are inlaid in jasper, bloodstone, jade, onyx, and
precious stones. Arjamand's tomb blossoms with never-fading Persian
flowers and Arabic sentences extolling her character, and is as
marvelous in workmanship as if produced by Florentine inlayers of the
present time. The sarcophagus was originally inclosed by a fence of
gold, studded with gems; but this was early replaced by the screen of
marble, local history asserts.
The supposition is that one Austin de Bordeaux, a French goldsmith, who
had been summoned to Agra by Shah Jahan to construct the celebrated
Peacock throne, had much to do with the treatment of the Taj's interior.
The building originally possessed two wonderful silver doors, of his
designing, but these were looted by Jat invaders in 1764 and melted
down. It is said that eight years were consumed by the artists intrusted
with the making and beautifying of Arjamand's cenotaph; and further,
that the Koran's every line and every word is reproduced by inlay or
relief carving on the interior and exterior of the Taj.
To the left of Arjamand's tomb is that of her lord and lover, its
location proving that it was placed there obviously from necessity and
as an afterthought. It is a span larger than his consort's stone, and
occupies nearly all the space allowed by the position of the grilled
inclosure--but is a sentimentally fitting intruder upon the general
design.
It is a curious bit of history that Shah Jahan, conscious of triumph as
the author of the Taj, long contemplated constructing a similar shrine
on the opposite bank of the Jumna, wherein his own body was to be
placed. It was to be constructed of dark-colored marble, but otherwise
to be a counterpart of Arjamand's tomb. The foundations were placed, and
the arangements for supplying labor and materials well advanced, when a
son of Jahan--Aurangzeb--who had long plotted for the Mogul throne,
secured control of the military forces, and overthrew his father's
rule.
Aurangzeb promptly adopted Delhi as his capital, leaving his parent to
languish as a political prisoner in the palace within the fort of Agra.
In a suite of very small rooms, and attended by a devoted daughter, the
great Shah Jahan there dreamed away the last seven years of his
life--but these apartments overlooked the Taj Mahal, two miles away, let
it be known. The heartbroken Jahan outlived his splendid wife by
thirty-seven years.
In this manner destiny willed that two great personages forever lie side
by side in death; and consequently the Taj is enriched as a temple of
sentiment; but--they do not sleep within the marble caskets the traveler
beholds. There is a vault deep underneath the floor, and there, in
positions agreeing with the monuments above, are the royal remains
enclosed in unornamented masonry.
In Jahan's plan for a somber reproduction of the Taj, a monumental
bridge was to span the Jumna and link the shrines of emperor and
empress. Instead of this fair dream, there is now only a flat,
sandcovered shore, upon which lazy tortoises range themselves under the
warming sun, and long-legged water fowl indulge in peaceful meditation
and slumber.
[Illustration: INLAID WORK IN MAUSOLEUM OF ITIMAD-UD-DAULAH, AGRA]
The curious acoustics of the Taj are observable to the visitor going
often to Arjamand's shrine. A harsh voice is echoed harshly back and
ceases quickly; but a woman's tones raised gently in song are echoed
many times, diversified and amplified in strange combinations of melody.
Such a voice reverberates from every side, seemingly ascends, and its
force finally dies away to silence like the notes of a flying wood-dove
in a forest.
This gem of Agra is worshiped as fervently by Hindus as by those of the
Moslem faith, and Indian artists in a few years almost destroy their
eyesight trying to portray in miniature upon ivory the architectural
perfection and delicacy of this marvel of the world.
When invading hordes have swept Central India, or alien garrisons been
quartered in Agra fort, the Taj has always suffered mutilation. The
Mahrattas looted it of everything movable and systematically wrenched
precious stones from their places in the design ornamenting the fabric
of the interior. After the Mutiny came the red-coated soldier, who
relieved the tedium of garrison duty by appropriating any attractive
piece of inlay overlooked by the Mahrattas--these pretty bits made
interesting souvenirs of India for sending home to the British Isles.
For twenty years the British government has been repairing this
desecration, under guidance of its viceroys. The great chamber of the
Taj now seems perfect in its embellishment--but there are no diamonds,
no rubies, and no emeralds, as of old. Bits of colored glass fill their
places.
But the Taj's exterior is to-day as perfect as it could have been two
centuries ago; and the dignity and sovereign chastity of its marble
surfaces--spoiled by no misplaced ornamentation, and unsullied by
vandal--make of this poetic shrine an offering to love surpassed in
beauty by nothing in all the world fashioned or reared by man.
Nowheres on God's footstool has any queen such a monument, and it is
even more beautiful in the silver dress of moonlight than in the golden
robes of the midday sun. By day or night alike it makes an impression on
the mind that time can never obliterate. Shah Jahan erected the Jami
Masjid mosque at Delhi, and the costly Muti Masjid mosque in Agra Fort,
as well as the splendid Khas Mahal, the Diwan-i-ain, and the
Diwan-i-khas, likewise in the fort--but more satisfying art is
represented in the Taj than in all the other structures of his reign.