East of Suez Part 7

Every adjunct of a fortified residence is there in the hills. Miles of battlemented masonry, pierced every few feet for bowmen, surrounds the straggling ma.s.s of buildings. Terraces are set upon the mountainside like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails are of unusual length.

Some of the apartments in the old palace rival anything to be seen at Lucknow, Agra or Delhi. A gem of a temple, adjoining a public audience hall of marvelous richness in finish, is dedicated to the awful G.o.ddess Kali, and each morning a goat is sacrificed to this deity, ever craving blood, by Hindu priests attached to the Maharajah's court. This is a revolting blot on a series of majestic buildings that unite to make one of India's greatest sights.

"How blessed would it be," you meditate, "if the betel-chewing priest might be sacrificed in place of the innocent and helpless animal." But no, human sacrifices are no longer permitted in India; England stopped them years ago.

Oh, yes; the state elephant. Well, it was extremely useful, for it rescued four stalwart native servants, laden with tiffin basket and a dozen bottles of mineral water, from toiling up the hills on foot.

Perched on his back like nabobs, they probably indulged in remarks disparaging of their masters, electing to walk, and mused maybe upon the theory that now and then man meets his deserts.

CHAPTER VIII

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 n.o.ble 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.e.x 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 t.i.tles 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ant.i.thesis of Akbar's mausoleum, of the Parthenon, of Napoleon's resting-place, of Grant's robust mausoleum on the Hudson. A sepulcher fas.h.i.+oned 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 n.o.ble 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 workmans.h.i.+p 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 a.s.serts.

The supposition is that one Austin de Bordeaux, a French goldsmith, who had been summoned to Agra by Shah Jahan to construct the celebrated Peac.o.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.o.r.e, upon which lazy tortoises range themselves under the warming sun, and long-legged water fowl indulge in peaceful meditation and slumber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 wors.h.i.+ped 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 gla.s.s 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 chast.i.ty of its marble surfaces--spoiled by no misplaced ornamentation, and unsullied by vandal--make of this poetic shrine an offering to love surpa.s.sed in beauty by nothing in all the world fas.h.i.+oned or reared by man.

Nowheres on G.o.d'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.

CHAPTER IX

BENARES, SACRED CITY OF THE HINDUS