Now it is evident that the first portion, A B, being the most perpendicular, is the one least liable to disturbance or thrust, and, being also two-thirds of the whole weight of the dome, if steady and firmly constructed, it is a more than sufficient abutment for the remaining third, which is the whole of the rest of the dome.

It is evident from an inspection of the figure, or from any section of the dome, how easy it must be to construct the first segment from the springing; and if this is very solidly built and placed on an immoveable basis, the architect may play with the rest; and he must be clumsy indeed if he cannot make it perfectly stable. In the East they did play with their domes, and made them of all sorts of fantastic forms, seeking to please the eye more than to consult the engineering necessities of the case, and yet it is the rarest possible contingency to find a dome that has fallen through faults in the construction.

In Europe architects have been timid and unskilled in dome-building; but with our present engineering knowledge it would be easy to construct far larger and more daring domes than even this of Mahmúd’s tomb, without the smallest fear of accident.

The external ordonnance of this building is as beautiful as that of the interior. At each angle stands an octagonal tower eight storeys high, simple and bold in its proportions, and crowned by a dome of great elegance. The lower part of the building is plain and solid, pierced only with such openings as are requisite to admit light and air; at the height of 83 ft. a cornice projects to the extent of 12 ft. from the wall, or nearly twice as much as the boldest European architect ever attempted. Above this an open gallery gives lightness and finish to the whole, each face being further relieved by two small minarets.

The same daring system of construction was carried out by the architects of Bijapur in their civil buildings. The great Audience Hall, for instance (Woodcut No. 325), opens in front with an arch 82 ft. wide, which, had it been sufficiently abutted, might have been a grand architectural feature; as it is, it is too like an engineering work to be satisfactory. Its cornice was in wood, and some of its supports are still in their places. Indeed, it is one of the peculiarities of the architecture of this city that, like the English architects in their roofs, those of Bijapur clung to wood as a constructive expedient long after its use had been abandoned in other parts of India. The Ashur Moobaruk, one of the most splendid palaces in the city, is entirely open on one side, the roof being supported only by two wooden pillars with immense bracket-capitals; and the internal ornaments are in the same material. The result of this practice was the same at Bijapur as in England—far greater depth of framing and greater richness in architectural ornamentation, and an intolerance of constructive awkwardness which led to the happiest results in both countries.

Among the principal edifices in the city is one of those seven-storeyed palaces which come across us so strangely in all out-of-the-way corners of the world. Add to this that the Ashur Moobaruk has been converted by the Mahomedans into a relic-shrine to contain some hairs of the Prophet’s beard, and we have a picture of the strange difficulty of weaning a Tartar from the innate prejudices of his race.

Besides these two there are five other palaces within the walls, some of them of great splendour, and numberless residences of the nobles and attendants of the court. But perhaps the most remarkable civil edifice is a little gateway, known as the Mehturi Mehal (“the Gate of the Sweeper”)—with a legend attached to it too long to quote here. It is in a mixed Hindu and Mahomedan style, every part and every detail covered with ornament, but always equally appropriate and elegant. Of its class it is perhaps the best example in the country, though this class may not be the highest.

The gigantic walls of the city itself, 6¼ miles in circumference, are a work of no mean magnitude, and, combined with the tombs of those who built them, and with the ruins of the suburbs of this once great city, they make up a scene of grandeur in desolation, equal to anything else now to be found even in India.

Scinde.

Among the minor styles of Mahomedan art in India there is one that would be singularly interesting in a historical sense if a sufficient number of examples existed to elucidate it, and they were of sufficient antiquity to connect the style with those of the West. From its situation, almost outside India, the province of Scinde must always have had a certain affinity with Persia and the countries lying to the westward of the Indus, and if we knew its architectural history we might probably be able to trace to their source many of the forms we cannot now explain, and join the styles of the East with those of the West in a manner we cannot at present pretend to accomplish.

It is doubtful, however, whether the materials are in existence for doing this. The buildings in this province were always in brick, no stone being available; and though they are not exposed to the destructive agencies of vegetation like those of Bengal, the mortar is bad, and the bricks are easily picked out and utilised by the natives to build their huts or villages.

All we at present know belongs to a series of tombs in the neighbourhood of Tatta, which were erected under the Mogul dynasty by the governors or great men of the province, during their sway. At least the oldest now known is that of Amir Khalleel Khan, erected in or about A.D. 1572, the year in which Akbar deposed the Jami dynasty and annexed Scinde to his empire. No tombs or mosques of the earlier dynasties have yet been edited, though they may exist. The known series extends from A.D. 1572-1640, and all show a strongly-marked affinity to the Persian style of the same or an earlier age. One example must for the present suffice to explain their general appearance, for they are all very much alike. It is the tomb of the Nawab Amir Khan, who was governor of the province in the reign of Shah Jehan, from A.D. 1627-1632, and afterwards A.D. 1641-1650. The tomb was built apparently about A.D. 1640 (Woodcut No. 326). It is of brick, but was, like all the others of its class, ornamented with coloured tiles, like those of Persia generally, of great beauty of pattern and exquisite harmony of colouring. It is not a very monumental way of adorning a building, but, as carried out on the dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, in the middle of the 16th or in the mosque at Tabreez in the beginning of the 13th century,[534] and generally in Persian buildings, it is capable of producing the most pleasing effects.

Like the other tombs in the province, it is so similar to Persian buildings of the same age, and so unlike any other found at the same age in India Proper, that we can have little doubt as to the nationality of those who erected them.

CHAPTER X.

MOGUL ARCHITECTURE.

Till very recently, a description of the style introduced by the Mogul emperors would have been considered a complete history of Mahomedan architecture in India. It is the style which was described by Roe and Bernier, and all subsequent travellers. It was rendered familiar to the public in Europe by the drawings of Daniell in the beginning of this century, and, since Agra and Delhi became practically British cities, their buildings have been described, drawn, and photographed till they have become almost as well known as any found in Europe. It will take a very long time before even photography will render the mosques or tombs of such cities as Ahmedabad or Bijapur as familiar or as easily understood. Yet it is, perhaps, true to assert that the buildings of other dynasties, commencing with the mosques at the Kutub and at Ajmir, and continuing till the last Dekhani dynasty was destroyed by Aurungzebe, make up a whole as extensive and more interesting, in a historical point of view, than even all that was done by the Moguls. On the other hand, however, there is a unity in the works of that dynasty, and a completeness in their history, which makes the study of their art peculiarly fascinating, and some of their buildings will bear comparison, in some respects, with any architectural productions in any part of the world. Their buildings, however, are so original, and so unlike any of the masterpieces of art that we are generally acquainted with, that it is almost impossible to institute any comparison between them which shall be satisfactory. How, for instance, can we compare the Parthenon with the Taje? They are buildings of nearly equal size and magnificence, both in white marble, both admirably adapted for the purposes for which they were built; but what else have they in common? The one is simple in its outline, and depending on pillars for its external adornment; the other has no pillars, and owes its greatest effects to its singularly varied outline and the mode in which its various parts are disposed, many of them wholly detached from the principal mass. The Parthenon belongs, it is true, to a higher class of art, its sculptures raising it into the region of the most intellectual branch of phonetic art; but, on the other hand, the exquisite inlay of precious stones at the Taje is so æsthetically beautiful as, in a merely architectural estimate, almost to bring it on a level with the Grecian masterpiece.[535]

Though their value, consequently, may be nearly the same, their forms are so essentially different that they hardly look like productions of the same art; and in an art so essentially conventional as architecture always is and must be, it requires long familiarity with any new form, and a knowledge of its origin and use, that can only be acquired by constant study, which makes it very difficult for a stranger to realise the real beauty that often underlies even the strangest forms. When, however, these difficulties are conquered, it will probably be found that there are few among the Eastern styles that deserve more attention, and would better repay any study that might be bestowed upon them, than the architecture of the Moguls.

Some little interruptions are experienced at the beginning of the narrative from the interpolation of the reigns of Shere Shah and his son Selim in the reign of Humayun. He was an Afghan by descent and an Indian by birth, and, had he been left to follow his own devices, would, no doubt, have built in the style of architecture used at Agra and Delhi before his countrymen were disturbed by the Mogul invasion. We have, it is true, very little to tell us what that style was during the 170 years that elapsed between the death of Tugluck Shah and the first invasion of Baber, but it seems to have been singularly plain and solid, and very unlike the florid art introduced by the Moguls, and practised by Shere Shah and his son apparently in rivalry to the new master of Hindustan. So little difference is there, however, between the architecture of Shere Shah and of Akbar that they must be treated as one style, beginning in great sobriety and elegance, and ending in something nearly approaching to wildness and exuberance of decoration, but still very beautiful—in some respects superior to the chaste but feeble elegance of the later Mogul style that succeeded it.

There is, again, a little difficulty and confusion in our having no examples of the style as practised by Baber and Humayun. The well-known tomb of the latter king was certainly built by his son Akbar; Baber was buried near Cabul, and no building known to be his has yet been identified in India. Yet that he did build is certain. In his own ‘Memoirs’ he tells us, “In Agra alone, and of the stone-cutters belonging to that place only, I every day employed on my palaces 680 persons; and in Agra, Sikri, Biana, Dhulpur, Gualior, and Koel, there were every day employed on my works 1491 stone-cutters.”[536] In the following pages he describes some of these works, and especially a Bowlee of great magnificence he excavated in the fort of Agra.[537] This was in the year 1526, and he lived to carry on these works for five years longer. During the ten years that his son retained the empire, we learn from Ferishta and other sources that he adorned his capital with many splendid edifices: one, a palace containing seven pavilions or audience-halls—one dedicated to each of the planets, in which he gave audience on the day of the week dedicated to the planet of the day.[538] There are traditions of a mosque he is said to have built on the banks of the Jumna, opposite where the Taje now stands; and his name is so frequently mentioned in connexion with buildings both at Agra and Delhi that there can be little doubt that he was a builder to as great an extent as the troubled character of his reign would admit of. But his buildings have perished, so that practically the history of Mogul architecture commences with the buildings of an Afghan dynasty who occupied the throne of India for sixteen years during the last part of Humayun’s reign.

It is probable that before long very considerable light will be thrown upon the origin of the style which the Moguls introduced into India, from an examination of the buildings erected at Samarcand by Timur a hundred years before Baber’s time (A.D. 1393-1404). Now that the city is in the hands of the Russians, it is accessible to Europeans. Its buildings have been drawn and photographed, but not yet described so as to be available for scientific purposes, but sufficiently so to indicate the direction in which light may be expected. Though a frightful savage in most respects, Timur was possessed of a true Turki love for noble architecture; and though he generally massacred the inhabitants of any town that resisted him, he always spared the architects and artists, and sent them to work on the embellishment of his capitals. Samarcand was consequently filled with splendid edifices, but, so far as can be judged from the materials available, more resembling in style those of Persia than anything now known to exist in India. The bulbous dome appears everywhere, and was not known at that time in India, unless it was in the quasi-Persian province of Scinde. Coloured tiles were the favourite mode of decoration, and altogether their style was gorgeous in the extreme as compared with the sobriety of the later Pathan buildings in India. A few years hence all this may be made quite clear and intelligible, meanwhile we must pass on to

Shere Shah, A.D. 1539-1545.

Certainly one of the most remarkable men who ever ruled in northern India, though his reign was limited to only five years’ duration; and during that brief space, disturbed by all the troubles incident to a usurpation, he left his impress on every branch of the administration. The revenue system, the police, the army administration, all the great reforms, in fact, which Akbar so successfully carried out, were commenced, and to some extent perfected, by this usurper, as the Moguls call him. In architecture, too, which most concerns us here, he certainly pointed out the path by which his successor reached such eminence.

The most perfect of his buildings that I am acquainted with is the mosque in the Purana Kìlah at Delhi. The walls of this place were repaired by Humayun in A.D. 1533, and I do not feel quite sure he had not something to do with the mosque. According to the latest authorities, however, it is said to have been built—I have no doubt it was finished—by Shere Shah in A.D. 1541.[539] It is a single hall, with five openings in front through pointed arches of what we would call Tudor form, but beautifully varied in design, and arranged in panels carved with the most exquisite designs and ornamented with parti-coloured marbles. One important dome, pierced with twelve small windows, crowns the centre; it has, however, no minarets and no courtyard, but even without these adjuncts it is one of the most satisfactory buildings of its class in India.[540]

In the citadel at Agra there stands—or at least stood when I was there—a fragment of a palace built by Shere Shah, or his son Selim, which was as exquisite a piece of decorative art as anything of its class in India. Being one of the first to occupy the ground, this palace was erected on the highest spot within the fort; hence the present Government, fancying this a favourable site for the erection of a barrack, pulled it down, and replaced it by a more than usually hideous brick erection of their own. This is now a warehouse, and looms, in whitewashed ugliness, over the marble palaces of the Moguls—a fit standard of comparison of the tastes of the two races.[541]

Judging from the fragment that remains, and the accounts received on the spot, this palace must have gone far to justify the eulogium more than once passed on the works of these Pathans—that “they built like giants, and finished like goldsmiths:” for the stones seem to have been of enormous size, and the details of most exquisite finish. It has passed away, however, like many another noble building of its class, under the ruthless barbarism of our rule. Mosques we have generally spared, and sometimes tombs, because they were unsuited to our economic purposes, and it would not answer to offend the religious feelings of the natives. But when we deposed the kings and appropriated their revenues, there was no one to claim their now useless abodes of splendour. It was consequently found cheaper either to pull them down, or use them as residences or arsenals, than to keep them up, so that very few now remain for the admiration of posterity.

The tomb of Shere Shah has been already described (ante, p. 516), as it is essentially Pathan in style. It was erected at his native place in Behar, to the south of the Ganges, far from Mogul influence at that time, and in the style of severe simplicity that characterised the works of his race between the times of Tugluck and those of Behlol Lodi (A.D. 1450-1488), the last really independent king of his line.

It is not quite clear how much of the tomb was built by himself, or how much by his son Selim, who certainly finished it. Selim also built the Selimghur on an island in the Jumna, to which Shah Jehan afterwards added his palace in New Delhi. Whether, however, he erected any buildings inside is not certain—nothing at least now remains of any importance. Generally he seems to have carried on and completed his father’s buildings, and between them they have left a group of architectural remains which, if collected together and illustrated, would form an interesting chapter in the history of Indian-Mahomedan styles.[542]

Akbar, 1556-1605.

It would require a volume to describe all the buildings erected by this remarkable man during his long reign of forty-nine years, and a hundred plates would hardly suffice to make known all their peculiarities. Had Akbar been content to follow in the lines of the style invented by the Pathans and perfected by Shere Shah, it might be easy enough to follow the sequence, but nothing in his character is so remarkable as the spirit of tolerance that pervaded all his acts. He seems to have had as sincere a love and admiration for his Hindu subjects as he had for those of his own faith, and whether from policy or inclination, to have cherished their arts as much as he did those that belonged exclusively to his own people. The consequence is a mixture throughout all his works of two styles, often more picturesque than correct, which might, in the course of another half century, have been blended into a completely new style if persevered in. The spirit of tolerance, however, died with him. There is no trace of Hinduism in the works of Jehangir or Shah Jehan, and Aurungzebe would have been horrified at the suggestion that arts of the infidels could influence anything he did.

One probably of his earliest works was the mausoleum, which he erected over the remains of his father, Humayun, at Delhi. Though it certainly was finished by Akbar, it most probably was designed and commenced by his father; for, as frequently remarked in the previous pages of this work, the great architectural peculiarity of the Tartar or Mongolian races is their tomb-building propensity, in which they are so strongly distinguished from the Aryan, and also from the great Semitic families, with whom they divide the greater part of the habitable globe. Nowhere is this more forcibly illustrated than in India—where the tombs of the Pathans and Moguls form a complete and unbroken series of architectural monuments from the first years of the Moslem invasion to the present hour.

The tombs of the Pathans are less splendid than those of the Moguls; but nevertheless the whole series is singularly interesting, the tombs being far more numerous than the mosques. Generally speaking, also, they are more artistic in design, and frequently not only larger but more splendidly decorated than the buildings exclusively devoted to prayer.

The princes of the Tartar races, in carrying out their love of tombs, made it the practice to build their own in their lifetime, as all people must who are really desirous of sepulchral magnificence. In doing this they rejected the Egyptian mode of preparing dark and deep chambers in the heart of the rock, or of the massive pyramid. The Tartars, on the other hand, built their sepulchres of such a character as to serve for places of enjoyment for themselves and their friends during their lifetime, and only when they could enjoy them no longer they became the solemn resting-places of their mortal remains.

The usual process for the erection of these structures is for the king or noble who intends to provide himself a tomb to enclose a garden outside the city walls, generally with high crenellated walls, and with one or more splendid gateways; and in the centre of this he erects a square or octagonal building, crowned by a dome, and in the more splendid examples with smaller and dome-roofed apartments on four of the sides or angles, the other four being devoted to entrances. This building is generally situated on a lofty square terrace, from which radiate four broad alleys, generally with marble-paved canals ornamented with fountains; the angular spaces are planted with cypresses and other evergreens and fruit-trees, making up one of those formal but beautiful gardens so characteristic of the East. During the lifetime of the founder, the central building is called a Barrah Durrie, or festal hall, and is used as a place of recreation and feasting by him and his friends.

At his death its destination is changed—the founder’s remains are interred beneath the central dome. Sometimes his favourite wife lies beside him; but more generally his family and relations are buried beneath the collateral domes. When once used as a place of burial, its vaults never again resound with festive mirth. The care of the building is handed over to priests and cadis, who gain a scanty subsistence by the sale of the fruits of the garden, or the alms of those who come to visit the last resting-place of their friend or master. Perfect silence takes the place of festivity and mirth. The beauty of the surrounding objects combines with the repose of the place to produce an effect as graceful as it is solemn and appropriate.

Though the tombs, with the remains of their enclosures, are so numerous throughout all India, the Taje Mehal, at Agra, is almost the only tomb that retains its garden in anything like its pristine beauty, and there is not perhaps in the whole world a scene where nature and art so successfully combine to produce a perfect work of art as within the precincts of this far-famed mausoleum.

The tomb of Humayun Shah, the first of the Moguls who was buried in India, still stands tolerably entire among the ruins of Old Delhi, of which indeed it forms the principal and most striking object. It stands well on a lofty square platform, adorned with arches, whose piers are ornamented with an inlay of white marble. The tomb itself is an octagonal apartment, of considerable dimensions, crowned by a dome of white marble, of very graceful contour externally. Four sides of the octagon are occupied by the entrances; to the other four smaller octagonal apartments are attached, making up a building nearly a square in plan, with only the angles slightly cut away.[543] Its plan is in fact that afterwards adopted at the Taje (Woodcut No. 338), but used here without the depth and poetry of that celebrated building. Its most marked characteristic, however, is its purity—it might almost be called poverty—of design. It is so very unlike anything else that Akbar ever built, that it is hardly possible it could have been designed by him. It has not even the picturesque boldness of the earlier Pathan tombs, and in fact looks more like buildings a century at least more modern than it really is. It is, however, a noble tomb, and anywhere else must be considered a wonder.

Humayun’s tomb, however, is so well known from drawings and photographs, that, in order to illustrate the architecture of the day, it may be preferable to take the contemporary tomb of Mohammad Ghaus at Gualior, which certainly was erected during the early part of Akbar’s reign, and is a singularly interesting example of the tombs of the period. It is a square, measuring 100 ft. each way, exclusive of the hexagonal towers, which are attached to the angles (Woodcut No. 327). The chamber of the tomb itself is a hall 43 ft. square, with the angles cut off by pointed arches so as to form an octagon, on which the dome rests. Around this square building is a gallery, 20 ft. wide between the piers, enclosed on all sides by a screen of the most exquisite tracery in pierced stone-work with a projecting porch on each face (Woodcut No. 328).[544]

On comparing this with the tomb of Shere Shah at Sasseram, which in many respects it resembles to a considerable extent, it will be seen that it marks a considerable progress in tomb-building during even the short period that elapsed between the erection of the two. There is an inherent weakness in an octagonal form as compared with the square, that even the Pathans never quite successfully conquered; and the outward screen of trellis-work is far more elegant than the open arcade of the Sasseram tomb. Something may be due to the fact that Gualior was a city where building of an ornamental character had long been going on, and where consequently a superior school of masons and architects may always have existed, while Sasseram was a remote country village, where these advantages were unknown. But be this as it may, the progress is such in so short a time, that we can only ascribe it to the invigorating touch of Akbar’s genius, which was afterwards to work such wonders.

One of the most remarkable and characteristic of Akbar’s buildings is the old or Red Palace in the fort, so called from being constructed entirely of red sandstone, unfortunately not a very good quality, and consequently much of its ornament has peeled off. It is a square building, measuring 249 ft. by 260 ft. In the centre is a courtyard, 71 ft. by 72 ft., on either side of which are two halls facing one another. The largest, 62 ft. by 37 ft., has a flat ceiling of stone, divided into panels, and supported by struts of purely Hindu design, very similar to those used in the palaces of Mân Sing and Vicramaditya at Gualior. Every feature around this court is indeed of pure Hindu architecture. No arches appear anywhere, but the horizontal style of construction everywhere. The ornamentation, too, which is carved on all the flat surfaces, is of a class used by Akbar, but not found in the buildings of others. Indeed, throughout this palace arches are used so sparingly, and Hindu forms and Hindu construction prevail to such an extent, that it would hardly be out of place at Chittore or Gualior, though it still bears that impress of vigour and originality that he and he only knew how to impress on all his works.[545]

It is, however, at Futtehpore Sikri that Akbar must be judged of as a builder. During the whole of his reign it was his favourite residence. He apparently was the first to occupy the spot, and apparently the last, at least, to build there, no single building being identified as having been erected by any of his successors.

Akbar seems to have had no settled plan when he commenced building there. The original part of the building seems to be the Khas Mehal, a square block of building measuring about 260 ft. each way, and therefore of about the same dimensions as the Red Palace in the fort at Agra. Its courtyard, however, is larger, about 170 ft. each way, and the buildings that surround it very inferior in richness of design and ornamentation. This, however, is far more than compensated for by the courts and pavilions that he added from time to time. There is the Dewanni Khas, or throne-room, a square building with a throne consisting of an enormous flower-like bracket, supported on a richly-carved pillar;[546] a peristylar building, called his office, very similar to one he erected at Allahabad, to be mentioned hereafter; a five-storeyed open pavilion, all the pillars of which are most richly carved, and long colonnades and walls connecting these with one another. The richest, the most beautiful, as well as the most characteristic of all his buildings here are three small pavilions, said to have been erected to please and accommodate his three favourite sultanas: hence called Bîr Bul ka Beti ka Mehal, for his Hindu wife, the daughter of his favourite minister, Bîr Bul; Miriam’s House, appropriated to his Christian consort; and the palace of the Roumi Sultana. They are small, but it is impossible to conceive anything so picturesque in outline, or any building carved and ornamented to such an extent, without the smallest approach to being overdone or in bad taste. The two pillars shown in the annexed woodcut, are from a cast from the last-named pavilion, which is now in the South Kensington Museum. It is, perhaps, the most elaborate of the three; but the other two are generally in better taste.

The glory, however, of Futtehpore Sikri is its mosque, which is hardly surpassed by any in India (Woodcut No. 330). It measures 550 ft. east and west, by 470 ft. north and south over all. The mosque itself, 290 ft. by 80 ft., is crowned by three domes. In its courtyard, which measures 350 ft. by 440 ft., stand two tombs: that of Selim Chisti, wholly in white marble, and the windows with pierced tracery of the most exquisite geometrical patterns—flowing tracery is a subsequent invention. It possesses besides a deep cornice of marble supported by brackets of the most elaborate design, so much so indeed as to be almost fantastic—the only approach to bad taste in the place; the other tomb, that of Islam Khan, is soberer and in excellent taste, but quite eclipsed by its surroundings. Even these parts, however, are surpassed in magnificence by the southern gateway, measuring 130 ft. by 85 ft. in plan, and of proportionate dimensions in height (Woodcut No. 331). As it stands on a rising ground, when looked at from below, its appearance is noble beyond that of any portal attached to any mosque in India, perhaps in the whole world. This gateway may also be quoted as a perfectly satisfactory solution of a problem which has exercised the ingenuity of architects in all ages, but was more successfully treated by the Saracenic architects than by any others.

It was always manifest that to give a large building a door at all in proportion to its dimensions was, to say the least of it, very inconvenient. Men are only 6 ft. high, and they do not want portals through which elephants might march. The Greeks never ventured, however, to reduce the proportionate size of their portals, though it may be they only opened the lower half, and they covered them, in almost all instances, with porticos to give them a dignity that even their dimensions failed to impart.

The Gothic architects tried, by splaying their deeply-embowed doorways, and by ornamenting them richly with carving and sculpture, to give them the dignity that was indispensable for their situation without unnecessarily increasing the size of the openings. It was left, however, for the Saracenic architects completely to get over the difficulty. They placed their portals—one, or three, or five, of very moderate dimensions—at the back of a semi-dome. This last feature thus became the porch or portico, and its dimensions became those of the portal, wholly irrespective of the size of the opening. No one, for instance, looking at this gateway can mistake that it is a doorway and that only, and no one thinks of the size of the openings which are provided at its base. The semi-dome is the modulus of the design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its magnificence.

The same system pervades almost all the portals of the age and style, and always with a perfectly satisfactory result—sometimes even more satisfactory than in this instance, though it may be in less proportionate dimensions. The principle seems the best that has yet been hit upon, and, when that is right, failure is as difficult, as it is to achieve success when the principle of the design is wrong.

Taking it altogether, this palace at Futtehpore Sikri is a romance in stone, such as few—very few—are to be found anywhere; and it is a reflex of the mind of the great man who built it more distinct than can easily be obtained from any other source.[547]

Allahabad was a more favourite residence of this monarch than Agra, perhaps as much so as even Futtehpore Sikri; but the English having appropriated the fort, its glories have been nearly obliterated. The most beautiful thing was the pavilion of the Chalîs Sitûn, or forty pillars, so called from its having that number on the principal floor, disposed in two concentric octagonal ranges, one internal of sixteen pillars, the other outside of twenty-four. Above this, supported by the inner colonnade, was an upper range of the same number of pillars crowned by a dome. This building has entirely disappeared, its materials being wanted to repair the fortifications. The great hall, however, still remains, represented in the annexed woodcut (No. 332). It is now the arsenal; a brick wall has been run up between its outer colonnades with windows of English architecture, and its curious pavilions and other accompaniments removed; and internally, whatever could not be conveniently cut away is carefully covered up with plaster and whitewash, and hid by stands of arms and deal fittings. Still its plan can be made out; a square hall supported by eight rows of columns, eight in each row, thus making in all sixty-four, surrounded by a deep verandah of double columns, with groups of four at the angles, all surmounted by bracket capitals of the most elegant and richest design, and altogether as fine in style and as rich in ornament as anything in India.

Perhaps, however, the most characteristic of Akbar’s buildings is the tomb he commenced to erect for himself at Secundra, near Agra, which is quite unlike any other tomb built in India either before or since, and of a design borrowed, as I believe, from a Hindu, or more correctly, Buddhist, model. It stands in an extensive garden, still kept up, approached by one noble gateway. In the centre of this garden, on a raised platform, stands the tomb itself, of a pyramidal form. The lower storey measures 320 ft. each way, exclusive of the angle towers. It is 30 ft. in height, and pierced by ten great arches on each face, and with a larger entrance adorned with a mosaic of marble in the centre (Woodcuts Nos. 333, 334).[548]

On this terrace stands another far more ornate, measuring 186 ft. on each side, and 14 ft. 9 in. in height. A third and fourth, of similar design, and respectively 15 ft. 2 in. and 14 ft. 6 in. high, stand on this, all these being of red sandstone. Within and above the last is a white marble enclosure 157 ft. each way, or externally just half the length of the lowest terrace, its outer wall entirely composed of marble trellis-work of the most beautiful patterns. Inside it is surrounded by a colonnade or cloister of the same material, in the centre of which, on a raised platform, is the tombstone of the founder, a splendid piece of the most beautiful arabesque tracery. This, however, is not the true burial-place; but the mortal remains of this great king repose under a far plainer tombstone in a vaulted chamber in the basement 35 ft. square, exactly under the simulated tomb that adorns the summit of the mausoleum.

At first sight it might appear that the design of this curious and exceptional tomb was either a caprice of the monarch who built it, or an importation from abroad (Woodcut No. 335). My impression, on the contrary, is, that it is a direct imitation of some such building as the old Buddhist viharas which may have existed, applied to other purposes in Akbar’s time. Turning back, for instance, to Woodcuts Nos. 66 and 181, representing the great rath at Mahavellipore, it will be seen that the number and proportion of the storeys is the same. The pavilions that adorn the upper storeys of Akbar’s tomb appear distinct reminiscences of the cells that stand on the edge of each platform of the rock-cut example. If the tomb had been crowned by a domical chamber over the tombstone, the likeness would have been so great that no one could mistake it, and my conviction is, that such a chamber was part of the original design. No such royal tomb remains exposed to the air in any Indian mausoleum; and the raised platform in the centre of the upper cloister, 38 ft. square, looks so like its foundation that I cannot help believing it was intended for that purpose. As the monument now stands, the pyramid has

a truncated and unmeaning aspect. The total height of the building now is a little more than 100 ft. to the top of the angle pavilions; and a central dome 30 or 40 ft. higher, which is the proportion that the base gives, seems just what is wanted to make this tomb as beautiful in outline and in proportion as it is in detail. Had it been so completed, it certainly would have ranked next the Taje among Indian mausolea.[550]