There have been seven Delhis; and it required no little courage to
establish a new one--the Imperial capital--actually within sight of most
of them; but the courage was forthcoming. Originally the position was to
be to the north of the present city, where the Coronation Durbar spread
its canvas, but Raisina was found to be healthier, and it is there, some
five miles to the south-west, that the new palaces are rising from the
rock. Fatehpur-Sikri is the only city with which the New Delhi can
be compared; but not Akbar himself could devise it on a nobler scale.
Akbar's centralising gift and Napoleon's spacious views may be said to
combine here, the long avenues having kinship with the Champs Elysées,
and Government House and the Secretariat on the great rocky plateau at
Raisina corresponding to the palace on Fatehpur-Sikri's highest point.
The splendour and the imagination which designed the lay-out of Imperial
Delhi cannot be over-praised, and under the hands of Sir Edwin Lutyens
and Mr. Herbert Baker some wonderful buildings are coming to life. The
city, since it is several square miles in extent, cannot be finished for
some years, but it may be ready to be the seat of Government as soon as
1924.
As I have said, the old Delhis are all about the new one. On the Grand
Trunk road out of Delhi proper, which goes to Muttra and Agra, you pass,
very quickly, on the left, the remains of Firozabad, the capital of
Firoz Shah in the later thirteenth century. Two or three miles further
on is Indrapat on its hill overlooking the Jumna, surrounded by lofty
walls. It is as modern as the sixteenth century, but is now in ruins.
At Indrapat reigned Humayun, the son of the mighty Babar (who on his
conquering way to Delhi had swum every river in advance of his army)
and the father of the mighty Akbar. I loitered long within Indrapat's
massive walls, which are now given up to a few attendants and an
occasional visitor, and like all the monuments around Delhi are most
carefully conserved under the Act for that purpose, which was not the
least of Lord Curzon's Viceregal achievements. Among the buildings which
still stand, rising from the turf, is Humayun's library. It was here
that he met his end--one tradition relating that he fell in the dark
on his way to fetch a book, and another that his purpose had been less
intellectually amatory.
Another mile and we come, still just beside the Grand Trunk road,
to Humayun's Tomb, which stands in a vast garden where green parrots
continually chatter and pursue each other. There is something very
charming--a touch of the truest civilisation, if civilisation means
the art of living graciously--in the practice of the old Emperors and
rulers, of building their mausoleums during their lifetime and using
them, until their ultimate destiny was fulfilled, as pleasure resorts.
To this enchanting spot came Humayun and his ladies full of life, to
be insouciant and gay. Then, his hour striking, Humayun's happy retreat
became Humayun's Tomb. He died in 1556, when Queen Mary, in England, was
persecuting Protestants. The Tomb is in good repair and to the stranger
to the East who has not yet visited Agra and seen the Taj Mahal (which
has a similar ground plan), it is as beautiful as need be. Humayun's
cenotaph, in plain white marble, is in the very centre. Below, in the
vault immediately beneath it, are his remains. Other illustrious dust is
here, too; and some less illustrious, such as that of Humayun's barber,
which reposes beneath a dome of burning-blue tiles in a corner of the
garden.
From the upper galleries of the Emperor's mausoleum the eye enjoys
various rich prospects--the valley of the Jumna pulsating in the heat,
the walls of the New Delhi at Raisina almost visibly growing, and, to
the north, Delhi itself, with the twin towers of the great mosque over
all. Down the Grand Trunk road, immediately below, are bullock wagons
and wayfarers, and here and there is a loaded camel. Across the road is
a curious little group of sacred buildings whither some of the wayfarers
no doubt are bent on a pilgrimage; for here is the shrine of the Saint
Nizam-ud-din Aulia, who worked miracles during his life and died during
the reign of our Edward II--in 1324.
On visiting his shrine (which involved the usual assumption of overshoes
to prevent our infidel leather from contaminating the floor), we fell,
after evading countless beggars and would-be guides, into the hands of a
kindly old man who pressed handfuls of little white nuts upon us and who
remains in my memory as the only independent Mussulman priest in India,
for he refused a tip. In this respect nothing could be more widely
separated than his conduct and that of the three priests of the Jama
Masjid in Delhi, who, discovering us on the wall, just before the
Friday service began, held up the service for several minutes while they
explained their schedule of gratuities--beginning with ten rupees
for the High Priest--and this after we had already provided for the
attendant who had supplied the overshoes and had led us to the point of
vantage! I thought how amusing it would be if a visitor to an English
cathedral--where money usually has to pass, as it is--were surrounded by
the Dean, Archdeacon, Canons and Minor Canons, with outstretched hands,
and had to buy his way to a sight of the altar, according to the status
of each. The spectacle would be as odd to us, as it must be to the
French or Italians--and even perhaps Americans--to see a demand for an
entrance fee on the Canterbury portals.
Were we to continue on the Grand Trunk road for a few miles, first
crossing a noble Mogul bridge, we should come to a little walled city,
Badapur, where a turning due west leads to another Delhi of the past,
Tughlakabad, and on to yet another, the remains of Lal Kot, where the
famous Minar soars to the sky.
One of the most pleasing effects of the New Delhi is the series of
vistas which the lay-out provides. It has been so arranged that many of
the avenues radiating from the central rock on which Government House
and the Secretariat are being set are closed at their distant ends by
historic buildings. Standing on the temporary tower which marks this
centre one is able to see in a few moments all the ruined cities that I
have mentioned. The Kutb Minar is the most important landmark in the
far south, although the eye rests most lovingly on the red and white
comeliness of the tomb of Safdar Jang in the middle distance--which,
with Humayun's Tomb, makes a triangle with the new Government House.
Within that triangle are the Lodi tombs, marking yet another period
in the history of Delhi, the Lodis being the rulers who early in the
fifteenth century were defeated by Babar.
The Kutb Minar enclosure, which is a large garden, where beautiful
masonry, flowers, trees and birds equally flourish, commemorates the
capture of Delhi by Muhammad bin Sam in 1193, the battle being directed
by his lieutenant, Kutb-ud-din. From that time until the Mutiny in 1857
Delhi was under Mohammedan rule. One of the first acts of the conqueror
was to destroy the Hindu temple that stood here and erect the mosque
that now takes its place, and he then built the great tower known as the
Kutb Minar, or Tower of Victory, which ascends in diminishing red
and white storeys to a height of 235 feet, involving the inquisitive
view-finder in a climb of 379 steps. On the other side of the mosque
are the beginnings of a second tower, which, judging by the size of the
base, was to have risen to a still greater height, but it was abandoned
after 150 feet. Its purpose was to celebrate for ever the glory of the
Emperor Ala-ud-din (1296-1316).
In front of the mosque is the Iron Pillar which has been the cause of so
much perplexity both to antiquaries and chemists, and meat and drink to
Sanscrit scholars. The pillar has an inscription commemorating an early
monarch named Chandra who conquered Bengal in the fifth century, and it
must have been brought to this spot for re-erection. But its refusal to
rust, and the purity of its constituents, are its special merits. To me
the mysteries of iron pillars are without interest, and what I chiefly
remember of this remarkable pleasaunce is the exquisite stone carvings
of the ruined cloisters and the green parrots that play among the trees.