Part 4 (1/2)
The two mosques of red sandstone on either side of the Taj are in the same style as the entrance gateway, the interiors being decorated with fresco and fine cut plaster-work. The one towards the west was intended for prayers only; the floor is panelled into separate s.p.a.ces for each wors.h.i.+pper. The opposite mosque was known, as the _Jamaat Khana_, or meeting-place for the congregation before prayers, and on the occasion of the great anniversary service. Standing on the platform in front of this mosque, one has a splendid view of the Taj, the river, and the distant Fort.
As the garden is now arranged; a full view of the magnificent platform, with its two mosques, and the Taj itself, can only be obtained from the opposite side of the river, which is not very accessible except by boat. When the traveller leaves Agra by rail, going east, the Taj in all its glory can be seen in the distance, floating like the mirage of some wondrous fairy palace over the waving tufts of the pampas gra.s.s, until at last it sinks into the pale horizon.
NOTE.--A small museum has been established lately by the Archaeological Department, in the western half of the Taj main gateway. It contains an interesting collection of photographs and drawings of the Taj at different periods, and specimens of the stones used in the _pietra dura_, or inlay work of the building. There are also samples ill.u.s.trating the technique of _pietra dura_, and the tools used by native workmen.
Itmad-ud-daulah's Tomb
The tomb of Itmad-ud-daulah, ”the Lord High Treasurer,” is on the east or left bank of the river, and is reached by crossing the pontoon bridge. It was built by Nur Mahal, the favourite wife of Jahangir, as a mausoleum for her father, Mirza Ghias Beg, who, according to one account, was a Persian from Teheran, and by another a native of Western Tartary.
A story is told of the Mirza's early life, of which it can only be said, _Se non e vero e ben trovato_. He left his home, accompanied by his wife and children, to seek his fortune in India, where he had some relatives at Akbar's court. His slender provision for the journey was exhausted in crossing the Great Desert, and they were all in danger of peris.h.i.+ng from hunger. In this extremity his wife gave birth to a daughter. The unhappy parents, distracted by hunger and fatigue, left the infant under a solitary shrub. With the father supporting his wife and children on the one bullock which remained to them, they pushed on in the hope of finding relief; but as the tiny landmark where the infant lay disappeared in the distance, the mother, in a paroxysm of grief, threw herself to the ground, crying, ”My child! my child!” The piteous appeal forced the father to return to restore the babe to her mother, and soon afterwards a caravan appeared in sight and rescued the whole party.
The child born under these romantic circ.u.mstances became the Empress Nur Mahal, who built this mausoleum. Her father reached Lah.o.r.e, where Akbar then held his court, and through the influence of his friends attracted the Emperor's attention. His talents won for him speedy promotion, and under Jahangir he became first Lord High Treasurer, and afterwards Wazir, or Prime Minister. Jahangir, in his memoirs, candidly discusses the character of his father-in-law. He was a good scholar, with a pretty taste for poetry, possessed many social qualities and a genial disposition. His accounts were always in perfect order, but ”he liked bribes, and showed much boldness in demanding them.” On his death his son, Asaf Khan, the father of Mumtaz Mahal, was appointed to succeed him.
Itmad-ad-daulah and his wife are buried in the central chamber; his brother and sister and other members of his family occupy the four corners. The pavilion on the roof, enclosed by beautiful marble tracery (Plate IX.), contains only replicas of the real tombs beneath. The mausoleum was commenced in 1622 and completed in 1628. As a composition it may lack inspiration, but it is exceedingly elegant, and scholarly like the Lord High Treasurer himself. In construction it marks the transition from the style of Akbar to that of Shah Jahan; from the Jahangiri Mahal to the Diwan-i-khas, the Muti Masjid, and the Taj. The towers at the four corners might be the first suggestion of the detached minarets of the Taj. The Hindu feeling which is so characteristic of most of Akbar's buildings is here only shown in the roof of the central chamber over the tomb; in pure Saracenic architecture a tomb is always covered by a dome.
This change in style greatly influenced the architecture of the whole of the north of India, Hindu and Jain as well as Muhammadan. It must be remembered that comparatively few of the master-builders who actually constructed the most famous examples of Mogul architecture were Muhammadans. The remarkable decline of the Mogul style which set in under Aurangzib was largely due to his bigotry in refusing to employ any but true believers.
The family ties of Itmad-ud-daulah and his daughter, the Empress, were closely connected with Persia and Central Asia; and no doubt the fas.h.i.+on set by Jahangir's court led to the Saracenic element becoming predominant in the Mogul style, both in construction and in decoration. Many authorities have connected the marked difference between Itmad-ud-daulah's tomb and Akbar's buildings to Italian influence, only on the ground that Jahangir is known to have been partial to Europeans, and allowed them free access to his palace. There is not, however, a trace of Italian art in any detail of the building; there is not a form or decorative idea which had not been used in India or in Central Asia for centuries. The use of marble inlaid work on so extensive a scale was a novelty, but it was only an imitation, or adaptation, of the splendid tile-mosaic and painted tile-work which were the commonest kinds of decoration employed in Persia: Wazir Khan's mosque at Lah.o.r.e, built in Jahangir's time, is a fine Indian example of the latter.
The art of inlaying stone had been practised in India for many years before this building; but here, for the first time, do we find the inlayers making attempts at direct imitation of Persian pottery decoration. All the familiar _motifs_ of Persian art, the tree of life and other floral types, the cypress tree, the flower-vases, fruits, wine-cups, and rose-water vessels are here reproduced exactly as they are found in Persian mosaic tiles. In Shah Jahan's palace and in the Taj they went a step further, and imitated the more naturalistic treatment of Persian fresco painting and other pictorial art; but there is never the slightest suggestion of European design in the decoration of these buildings.
It is quite possible that some Italians may have shown the native inlayers specimens of Florentine _pietra dura_, and suggested to them this naturalistic treatment, but if Italians or other Europeans had been engaged to instruct or supervise in the decoration of these buildings they would certainly have left some traces of their handiwork. In the technical part of the process the Indian workmen had nothing to learn, and in the design they made no attempt to follow European forms, except in the one solitary instance of the decoration of the throne-chamber of the Delhi Palace, which is much later in date than Itmad-ud-daulah's tomb. [13]
The whole scheme of the exterior decoration is so finely carried out, both in arrangement and colour, that its extreme elaboration produces no effect of unquietness. At a distance it only gives a suggestion of a soft bloom or iridescence on the surface of the marble. The soffits of the doorways are carved with extraordinary delicacy. Inside the building there are remains of fresco and other painted decoration.
Beautifully placed on the river bank, there is a fine little mosque, which at sunset makes a charming picture. The boldness and greater simplicity of the decoration contrast well with the richness of that of the mausoleum.
The Chini-ka-Rauza
Beyond Itmad-ud-daulah's tomb, on the same side of the river, is a beautiful ruin, once entirely covered with the same Persian mosaic tile-work, which suggested the more costly style of decoration in inlaid marble. It is called Chini-ka-Rauza, or the China Tomb, and is supposed to be the mausoleum of Afzal Khan, a Persian poet, who entered the service of Jahangir, and afterwards became Prime Minister to Shah Jahan. He died in Lah.o.r.e in 1639. The weather and ill-treatment of various kinds have removed a great deal of the exquisite enamel colours from the tiles, but enough remains to indicate how rich and magnificent the effect must have been originally. A part of the south facade which has fallen in shows how the builders employed earthen pots to lessen the weight of the concrete filling, a practice followed in the ancient dome construction of Egypt and Rome.
The Ram Bagh
Among a number of more or less ruined garden-houses on this bank of the river, there is one, a little beyond the Chini-ka-Rauza, of especial interest, on account of the tradition which a.s.sociates it with the Emperor Babar. It is called the Ram Bagh, and is believed to have been one of the ”elegant and regularly planned pleasure-grounds”
which Babar laid out and planted with fruit trees and flowers, as he has described in his memoirs.
No doubt this was the scene of many imperial picnics; not the drunken revels of Babar's Kabul days--for just before the great battle with the Rajputs in 1527 he smashed all his gold and silver drinking-cups and took a vow of total abstinence, which he kept faithfully--but the more sane and temperate pleasures which music, poetry, and his intense delight in the beauties of nature could furnish. Here is a charming picture he has given of another garden he laid out in the Istalif district of Kabul:--
”On the outside of the garden are large and beautiful spreading plane-trees, under the shade of which there are agreeable spots, finely sheltered. A perennial stream, large enough to turn a mill, runs through the garden, and on its banks are planted plane and other trees. Formerly this stream flowed in a winding and crooked course, but I ordered its course to be altered according to a plan which added greatly to the beauty of the place. Lower down ... on the lower skirts of the hills is a fountain, named Kwajeh-seh-yaran (Kwajeh three friends), around which are three species of trees; above the fountain are many beautiful plane trees, which yield a pleasant shade. On the two sides of the fountain, on small eminences at the bottom of the hills, there are a number of oak trees. Except on these two spots, where there are groves of oak, there is not an oak to be met with on the hills of the west of Kabul. In front of this fountain, towards the plain, there are many spots covered with the flowering arghwan tree, and, besides these arghwan plots, there are none else in the whole country. It is said that these three kinds of trees were bestowed on it by the power of these three holy men, beloved of G.o.d; and that is the origin of the name Sej-Yaran. I directed this fountain to be built round with stone, and formed a cistern of lime and mortar ten yez by ten. On the four sides of the fountain a fine level platform for resting was constructed on a very neat plan. At the time when the arghwan flowers begin to blow, I do not know of any place in the world to be compared with it. The yellow arghwan is here very abundant, and the yellow arghwan blossom mingles with the red.”
The Ram Bagh was the temporary resting-place of the body of Babar before it was taken to Kabul for interment in another of the gardens he loved so much. The old Mogul style of gardening is a lost art, and one misses in the Ram Bagh the stately rows of cypress, interspersed with flowering trees, the formal flower-beds glowing with colour like a living carpet, which were planted by Babar; but the terraces, the fountain, the water-channels, and the little stone water-shoots--cunningly carved so that the water breaks over them with a pleasant gurgling sound--which may have recalled to him the murmurings of his native mountain-streams--the old well from which the water of the Jumna is lifted into the channels, can still be seen, as well as the pavilions on the river-bank, now modernized with modern bad taste.
In later times the Ram Bagh was the garden-house of the Empress Nur Mahal. It was kept up by all succeeding Governments, and it is said to have obtained its name of Ram Bagh from the Mahrattas in the eighteenth century.