THE MAGNIFICENT MAUSOLEUM OF AGRA
Several hotels were available on the arrival of the travellers at Agra, and
they were domiciled at Lawrie's. The journey was made in an afternoon, and
was through a densely populated territory, so that the trip was very
enjoyable. After dinner the party assembled in a parlor provided for their
use; and Lord Tremlyn gave a talk, for he objected to the formality of a
lecture. He seated himself in an easy-chair, and took from his pocket a
little book, to which he occasionally referred.
"Agra, on the whole, is the handsomest city of Upper India, though of
course there may be some difference of opinion in this matter," he began.
"It is eight hundred and forty-one miles north-west of Calcutta, and one
hundred and forty south-east of Delhi. Like Delhi, it is on the Jumna,
which is here crossed by a floating bridge. One of the most prominent
buildings is the fortress of Akbar, and you must know something of this
sovereign in order to understand Agra.
"He was known as Akbar the Great, the Mogul emperor of India, and the
greatest Asiatic monarch of modern times. He was the son of Houmayoun,
whose mausoleum you visited at Delhi. The father was robbed of his throne,
and retreated to Persia; and it was on the way there that Akbar was born,
in 1542. After an exile of twelve years, Houmayoun recovered his throne,
but lost his life within a year after his return. The government was
committed to the care of a regent, who became a tyrant; and the young
prince took possession of it himself at the age of eighteen.
"At this time only a few provinces were subject to the rule of his father;
but in a dozen years Akbar had made himself master of all the country north
of the Vindhya Mountains, or of a line drawn from Baroda to Calcutta,
though he was not so fortunate in subduing the southern portion of the
peninsula. He was a great conqueror; yet, what is not so common with the
mighty rulers of the world, past or present, he was a wise and humane
monarch, and governed his realm with wisdom and vigor. His reign was the
most unparalleled, for his justice, energy, and progressive character, of
any in the East. In this manner he made his empire the greatest of the age
in which he lived.
"He fostered commerce by the construction of roads, by the establishment of
an excellent police system, and introduced a uniform system of weights and
measures. He looked after the administration of his viceroys in his
numerous provinces, permitted no extortion on the part of his officers, and
saw that justice was impartially meted out to all classes. He was a
Mohammedan, but he was tolerant of all the prevailing sects in religion.
"He gave the Hindus entire freedom of worship; though far in advance of his
successors, he prohibited cruel customs, such as the burning of widows, and
other barbarous practices. He founded schools and encouraged literature. He
inquired into the various forms of religion, and even sent for Portuguese
missionaries at Goa to explain the Christian faith to him. From the various
beliefs he made up a kind of eclectic religion; but it was not a success
outside of his palace. A history of his reign of fifty years was written by
his chief minister. Akbar died in 1605, and was interred in a beautiful
mausoleum, near the city.
"With the ordinary sights of India you are already somewhat familiar; and,
aside from what you may see in any city here, there is not much to interest
you, with the grand exception of the Taj, and some of the mausoleums, of
which I will say nothing, as we are now to visit them."
The company retired early, and after breakfast the next morning the
carriages were at the door. In the first one were Captain Ringgold, Mrs.
Belgrave, and Sir Modava. Lord Tremlyn had more than once manifested a
desire to be in the same carriage with Miss Blanche; and he went with her
and Louis on this occasion, while Mr. and Mrs. Woolridge invited General
Noury to accompany them.
"Akbar made Agra the capital of the Mogul Empire," said Sir Modava, as the
carriage started. "He changed its old name to Akbarabad, and the natives
call it so to this day."
"The termination of that name seems to be very common in India, as
Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad," added the commander.
"In the Hindu, _abad_ means a town or a village; and if you cut off
that ending you will find the person or place for whom it was named, as
Akbar-abad."
"Precisely as it is in our country, where we have Morris-town, Allen-town,
Morgan-town, and a thousand others," added the captain.
"After the death of Akbar his successors reigned in Delhi. The Mogul Empire
came to an end in 1761; and Agra was sacked by the Jats, and later the
Mahrattas completed the destruction they had begun. It was captured from
Scindia in 1803 by the English under Lord Lake, and has since remained in
their possession. In all these disasters its population, which had been
seven hundred thousand, dropped to ten thousand; but under British rule it
recovered some of its former prosperity, and it is now about one hundred
and seventy thousand."
"If a man wants to build a house here he has only to dig for the material,
for not far down he will find the stone and brick of the structures that
crumbled into the earth after the death of the great emperor. We are now
approaching the fortress, or the citadel as it is oftener called. It is a
sort of acropolis, for it contains palaces, mosques, halls of justice, and
other buildings."
The carriages stopped at the principal gate, opposite to which is the
mosque of Jummah Musjid, or the Cathedral Mosque. About all the great
structures here are built of red sandstone, with marble bands on many of
them, so that it is hardly necessary to mention the material, unless it
varies from the rule. This mosque is a fine one, mounted on a marble
esplanade or platform, like most buildings of this description.
Crossing the drawbridge, the visitors came to the Palace of Justice, built
by Akbar. It is six hundred feet long, enclosed by a colonnade of arches,
like a cloister. It is now used as a military storeroom, divided by brick
walls, and filled with cannon and shot. The English have made a sort of
museum here; and the superior officer who did the honors to his lordship
showed them the throne of Akbar, a long marble seat, inlaid with precious
stones, with a graceful canopy of the same material over it; and the boys
thought he would have had a more comfortable seat if he had put off the
period of his reign to the present time.
The gates of Somnath, twelve feet high, were beautiful pieces of carving.
They once guarded the entrance to the temple of Krishna, in Goojerat; but
in the tenth century they were carried off by Sultan Mahmoud, of Ghuzni, in
Afghanistan. He captured Somnath, and destroyed all the idols. The Brahmins
offered him immense bribes if he would spare the statue of Krishna; but he
spurned the money, and destroyed the image with his own hands. He found
that it was hollow, and filled with jewels of great value.
When the English conquered Afghanistan, Lord Ellenborough sent the gates to
Agra; but some think they were not the gates of the temple, but of
Mahmoud's tomb, for they were made of a wood that does not grow in India,
and they are not of Hindu workmanship. From the museum the party walked to
the imperial palace of Akbar, still in an excellent state of preservation.
Some of the apartments, especially the bath-room of the monarch, made the
visitors think of the Arabian Nights.
The great black marble slab on which Akbar sat to administer justice was
pointed out. When one of the Jat chiefs seated himself upon it, the story
goes, it cracked, and blood flowed from the fracture. Lord Ellenborough
tried the experiment, and the stone broke into two pieces. The Mosque of
Pearls is a small building of white marble on a rose-colored platform. It
is considered by experts the finest piece of architecture in the fortress.
Nothing could be simpler, nothing grander. Bishop Heber visited it and
wrote this of it:--
"This spotless sanctuary, showing such a pure spirit of adoration, made me,
a Christian, feel humbled, when I considered that no architect of our
religion had ever been able to produce anything equal to this temple of
Allah."
Following the Jumna, the carriages reached the Taj, the wonder and glory of
all India. It was built by the Emperor Shah Jehan, as a mausoleum for the
Empress Mumtazi Mahal. She was not only beautiful, but famous for mental
endowments; and the emperor had so much love and admiration for her that he
determined to erect to her memory the most beautiful monument that had ever
been constructed by any prince. It was begun in 1630, and twenty thousand
workmen were employed upon it for seventeen years. History says that one
hundred and forty thousand cartloads of pink sandstone and marble were
brought from the quarries of Rajputana; and every province of the empire
furnished precious stones to adorn it. Its cost was from ten to fifteen
millions of dollars.
The golden crescent of the Taj is two hundred and seventy feet above the
level of the river. The magnificent temple is placed in the centre of a
garden nine hundred and sixty feet long by three hundred and thirty in
width, filled with avenues flanked with cypress-trees, and planted with
flowers, on a terrace of sandstone. In the centre of this garden is a
marble platform, two hundred and eighty-five feet on all sides, and fifteen
feet high, which may be called the pedestal of the mosque. The principal
entrance to the garden is more elaborate and beautiful than the fronts of
many noted mosques, for it is adorned with towers crowned with cupolas.
Entering the enclosure, and walking along the avenue of cypress-trees, one
obtains his first view of the great dome of the Taj. It looks like about
three-fourths of a globe, capped with a slender spire. From this point,
through the trees, may be seen a forest of minarets, cupolas, towers, and
inferior domes. The mausoleum is in the form of an irregular octagon, the
longest side being one hundred and twenty feet in length. Each façade has a
lofty Saracenic arch, in which is an entrance.
The interior surpasses the exterior in magnificence, the ceiling, walls,
and tombstones being a mass of mosaics. The resting-place of the empress
and Shah Jehan is in the centre of the edifice, enclosed by a marble
screen. Some experts who have examined the building thoroughly are unable
to find any architectural faults, though perhaps others would be more
successful. The party visited several other mosques and mausoleums; but
nothing could compare with the Taj. The commander suggested that they ought
to have visited it last, as the pie or pudding comes in after the fish or
meats at Von Blonk Park.
The members of the party were unable to say enough in praise of the Taj,
and no one seems to be in danger of exaggerating its beauty and its
wonders. On their return to the hotel, they seated themselves in their
parlor, and talked till dinner-time about the mausoleum, for they had many
questions to ask of the viscount and the Hindu gentleman.
"There seemed to be two other mosques back of the mausoleum," said Mrs.
Belgrave; "we did not visit them."
"The Mohammedan traditions require that a mosque should be erected in
connection with every mortuary temple," replied Sir Modava. "Isa Mohammed,
a later emperor, built one at the western end of the terrace. It was a
beautiful building with three domes, in keeping with the Taj. But the
builder found that it gave a one-sided appearance to the view; and he
erected the one on the east end, to balance the other and restore the
proportions. Either of them is equal to the finest mosque in Cairo or
Constantinople."
"That was an expensive method of making things regular," added the
commander. "Some one spoke in Delhi of a durbar in connection with Agra. I
think it was Mr. Meerza."
General Noury laughed at this title; for it sounded funny to him, applied
to an Oriental, and the captain had forgotten the rest of the name.
"Abbas-Meerza, we call him, without any 'mister,'" he added.
"I will try to remember it," replied the commander. "But what is a durbar?
Is it something good to eat?"
"They do not eat it here, and probably it would be indigestible if they
could do so," continued Sir Modava. "A durbar is a very important event in
India, but is not eatable. It is an occasion at which the native princes
acknowledge the sovereignty of the Queen of England. In 1866 the most noted
one took place at Agra, a full description of which would require a long
time. For the first time after the establishment of the Empire of India,
the governor-general, representing the empress, received the homage of
twenty-six sovereign princes. It was an act of submission. The ceremonies
occupied many days; and kings, maharajahs, rajahs, and other princes bowed
to the throne of the sovereign. It was a tremendous occasion; and it was a
festival honored by banquets, processions, and royal gatherings. I will get
a book for you, Captain Ringgold, when we reach Calcutta, from which you
may read a full account of the affair. It grew out of an ancient Indian
custom, and many of them on a small scale have occurred."
The tourists spent another day at Agra, and, though they had not exhausted
the sights of the place, the commander decided that they could remain no
longer, and they left on the following day for Cawnpore.