Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis

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Several years later, when Jehanghir ascended the throne, he had
not forgotten the beautiful Persian, and sent emissaries to Calcutta
to arrange with her husband for a divorce so that he might take
her into his own harem. Shir Afghan refused, and the king ordered
his assassination. Nur Jehan undoubtedly loved her husband, and
sincerely mourned him. She repelled the addresses of the emperor,
and for several years earned her living by embroidery and painting
silks. One day the emperor surprised her in her apartment. He
was the only man in India who had the right to intrude upon his
lady subjects, but seems to have used it with rare discretion.
When she recognized her visitor she bowed her head to the floor
nine times in accordance with the custom of the country; and
although she was wearing the simplest of garments, she had lost
none of her beauty or graces, and treated the Mogul with becoming
modesty and dignity. When he reproached her for her plain attire
she replied:

"Those born to servitude must dress as it shall please them whom
they serve. Those women around me are my servants and I lighten
their bondage by every indulgence in my power; and I, who am your
slave, O Emperor of the World, am willing to dress according to
your pleasure and not my own."

This significant retort pleased His Majesty immensely, and, with
the facilities that were afforded emperors in those days, he had
her sent at once to the imperial harem, where she was provided
with every possible comfort and luxury and was promoted rapidly
over the other women. She received the title Nur Jehan Begam
(Light of the World). The Emperor granted her the right of
sovereignty in her own name; her portrait was placed upon the
coin of the country; and after several years her power became
so great that the officials would not obey any important order
from his majesty unless it bore her indorsement. He willingly
submitted to her judgment and counsel. She repressed his passions,
caprices and prejudices, and when any matter of serious importance
arose in the administration of affairs, it was submitted to her
before action was taken. Her beauty and her graces were the theme
of all the poets of India, and her goodness, the kindness of her
heart and her unbounded generosity are preserved by innumerable
traditions. She was the godmother of all orphan girls and provided
their dowers when they were married, and it is said that during
her reign she procured good husbands for thousands of friendless
girls who otherwise must have spent their lives in slavery. Thus
the child of the desert became the most powerful influence in
the East, for in those days the authority of the Mogul extended
from the Ganges to the Bosporus and the Baltic Sea.

Nur Jehan took good care of her own family. Her father continued
to occupy the office of grand vizier until his death, and her
brother, Asaf Khan, became high treasurer of the empire and
father-in-law of the Mogul. Other relatives were placed in
remunerative and influential positions. But at last she made a
blunder, and failed to secure the crown for her son, Sheriar,
who, being a younger member of the family, was not entitled to
it, and Shah Jehan, the oldest son of the Mogul by another wife,
succeeded him to the throne.

Shah Jehan promptly murdered his ambitious brother, as was the
amiable custom of those days, but treated his father's famous
widow with great respect and generosity. He presented her with
a magnificent palace, gave her an allowance of $1,250,000 a year
and accepted her pledge that she would interfere no longer in
politics. She survived nineteen years and devoted her time and
talents thereafter and several millions of dollars to the
construction of a tomb to the memory of her father, which still
stands as one of the finest of the group of architectural wonders
of Agra. It is situated in a walled garden on the bank of the
River Jumna about a mile and a half from the hotels, and is
constructed entirely of white marble. The sides are of the most
beautiful perforated work, and the towers are of exquisite design.
Much of the walls are covered with the Florentine mosaic work
similar to that which distinguishes the Taj Mahal.

[Illustration: AKBAR, THE GREAT MOGUL. SHAH JEHAN]

Shah Jehan, the greatest of all the Moguls, had many wives, and
three in particular. One of them was a Hindu, of whom we know
very little; another was a Mohammedan, the daughter of Asaf Khan,
high treasurer of the empire and the niece of Nur Jehan. She is
the woman who sleeps in the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful of all
human structures. The third was Miriam, a Portuguese Christian
princess, who never renounced her religion, and built a Roman
Catholic Church in a park outside the walls of Agra in connection
with a palace provided for her special residence. This marriage
was brought about through the influence of the governor of the
Portuguese colony at Goa, 200 miles south of Bombay, and illustrates
the liberality of Shah Jehan in religious matters. He not only
tolerated, but invited Catholic missionaries to come into his
empire and preach their doctrines, and although we know very
little of the experience of the Sultana Miriam, and her life
must have been rather lonely and isolated, yet the king did not
require her to remain in the harem with his other wives, but
gave her an independent establishment a considerable distance
from the city, where she was attended by ladies of her own race
and religion. Her palace has disappeared, but the church she
built is still standing, and her tomb is preserved. By successive
changes they have passed under the control of the Church of England
and her grounds are now occupied by an orphanage under the
superintendence of a Mr. Moore, who has 360 young Hindus under
his care. The fathers and mothers of most of them died during
the famine and he is teaching them useful trades. We stopped
to talk to some of the children as we drove about the place,
but did not get much information. The boys giggled and ran away
and the workmen were surprisingly ignorant of their own affairs,
which, I have discovered, is a habit Hindus cultivate when they
meet strangers.

Akbar the Great is buried in a coffin of solid gold in a mausoleum
of exquisite beauty about six miles from Agra on the road to
Delhi. It is another architectural wonder. Many critics consider
it almost equal to Taj Mahal. It is reached by a lovely drive
along a splendid road that runs like a green aisle through a
grove of noble old trees whose boughs are inhabited by myriads
of parrots and monkeys. The mausoleum is quite different from
any other that we have seen, being a sort of pyramid of four open
platforms, standing on columns. These are of red sandstone and
the fourth, where rests the tomb of the great Mogul, of marble.
The lower stories are frescoed and decorated elaborately in blue
and gold. The fourth or highest platform is a beautiful little
cloister of the purest white. No description in words could possibly
do it justice or convey anything like an accurate idea of its
beauty. Imagine, if you can, a platform eighty feet from the
ground reached by beautiful stairways and inclosed by roofless
walls of the purest marble that was ever quarried. These walls
are divided into panels. Each panel contains a slab of marble
about an inch thick and perforated like the finest of lace. The
divisions and frame work, the base and frieze are chiseled with
embroidery in stone such as can be found nowhere else. There is
no roof but the sky. In the center of this lofty chamber stands
a solid block of marble which is covered with inscriptions from
the Koran in graceful, flowing Persian text. Sealed within a
cenotaph underneath are the remains of the great Akbar.

About three feet from his head stands a low marble column exquisitely
carved. It is about four feet high, and in the center of the
top is a defect, a rough hole, which seems to have been left
there intentionally. When the mighty Akbar died, his son and
successor, the Emperor Jehanghir, imbedded in the center of that
column, where it might be admired by the thousands of people who
came to the tomb every day, the Kohinoor, then the most valued
diamond in the world and still one of the most famous of jewels,
and chief ornament in the British crown. It was one of the most
audacious exhibitions of wealth and recklessness ever made, but
the stone remained there in the open air, guarded only by the
ordinary custodian of the tomb, from 1668 to 1739, when Nadir,
Shah of Persia, invaded India, captured Delhi, sacked the palaces
of the moguls, and carried back to his own country more than
$300,000,000 worth of their treasures.

XV

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF BUILDINGS

Once upon a time there lived an Arab woman named Arjumand Banu.
We know very little about her, except that she lived in Agra,
India, and was the Sultana of Shah Jehan, the greatest of the
Mogul emperors. She must have been a good woman and a good wife,
because, after eighteen years of married life, and within twelve
months after his accession to the throne, in 1629, she died in
giving birth to her fourteenth baby. And her husband loved her so
much that he sheltered her grave with a mausoleum which, without
question or reservation, is pronounced by all architects and
critics to be the most beautiful building in the world--the most
sublime and perfect work of human hands.

[Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL]

It is called the Taj Mahal, which means "The Crown of the Palaces,"
and is pronounced Taash Mahal, with the accent on the last syllable
of the last word. Its architect is not definitely known, but the
design is supposed to have been made by Ustad Isa, a Persian,
who was assisted by Geronino Verroneo, an Italian, and Austin de
Bordeaux, a Frenchman. They are credited with the mosaics and
other decorations. Austin designed and made the famous peacock
throne at Delhi. Governor La Fouche of that province, who has
carefully restored the park that surrounds the building, and is
keeping things up in a way that commands hearty commendation,
has the original plans and specifications, which were discovered
among the archives of the Moguls in Delhi after the mutiny of 1857.
The records show also that the tomb cost more than $20,000,000 of
American money, not including labor, for like those other famous
sepulchers, the pyramids of Egypt, this wonderful structure was
erected by forced labor, by unpaid workmen, who were drafted
from their shops and farms by order of the Mogul for that purpose,
and, according to the custom of the time, they were compelled to
support themselves as well as their families during the period
of their employment. Thousands of those poor, helpless creatures
died of starvation and exhaustion; thousands perished of disease,
and thousands more, including women and children, suffered untold
distress and agony, all because one loving husband desired to do
honor to the favorite among his many wives. The workmen were changed
at intervals, 20,000 being constantly employed for twenty-two
years upon this eulogy in marble. The descendants of some of
the artists engaged upon its matchless decoration still live in
Agra and enjoy a certain distinction because of their ancestry.
Forty or fifty of them were employed by Governor La Fouche in
making repairs and restorations in 1902, and a dozen or more
are still at work. It is customary in that country for sons to
follow the occupations of their fathers.

The road to the Taj Mahal from the City of Agra crosses the River
Jumna, winds about among modern bungalows in which British officials
and military officers reside, alternating with the ruins of ancient
palaces, tombs, temples and shrines which are allowed to deface
the landscape. Some of the fields are cultivated, and in December,
when we were there, the business of the farmers seemed chiefly
to be that of hoisting water from wells to irrigate their crops.
They have a curious method. A team of oxen hoists the buckets
with a long rope running over a pulley, and every time they make
a trip along the well-worn pathway they dump a barrel or more of
much needed moisture into a ditch that feeds the thirsty ground.

The roadway is well kept. It was made several centuries ago, and
was put in perfect order in 1902 on account of the Imperial durbar
at Delhi, which brought thousands of critical strangers to see the
Taj Mahal, which really is the greatest sight in India, and is
more famous than any other building, except perhaps Westminster
Abbey and St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome. The road leads up to a
superb gateway of red sandstone inlaid with inscriptions from
the Koran in white marble, and surmounted by twenty-six small
marble domes, Moorish kiosks, arches and pinnacles. This gateway
is considered one of the finest architectural monuments in all
India. Bayard Taylor pronounced it equal to the Taj itself.

You pass under a noble arch one hundred and forty feet high and
one hundred and ten feet wide, which is guarded by a group of
Moslem priests and a squad of native soldiers who protect the
property from vandals. Having passed this gateway you find yourself
at the top of a flight of wide steps overlooking a great garden,
which was originally laid out by the Mogul Shah Jehan and by Lord
Curzon's orders was restored last year as nearly as possible
to its original condition and appearance. About fifty acres are
inclosed by a high wall of a design appropriate to its purpose.
There are groups of cypress equal in size and beauty to any in
India; groves of orange and lemon trees, palms and pomegranates,
flowering plants and shrubs, through which winding walks of gravel
have been laid. From the steps of the gateway to the tomb is
a vista about a hundred feet wide paved with white and black
marble with tessellated designs, inclosed with walls of cypress
boughs. In the center are a series of tanks, or marble basins,
fed from fountains, and goldfish swim about in the limpid water.
This vista, of course, was intended to make the first view as
impressive as possible, and it is safe to say that there is no
other equal to it. At the other end of the marble-paved tunnel
of trees, against a cloudless sky, rises the most symmetrical,
the most perfect, perhaps the only faultless human structure in
existence. At first one is inclined to be a little bewildered,
a little dazed, as if the senses were paralyzed, and could not
adjust themselves to this "poem in marble," or "vision in marble,"
or "dream in marble," as poets and artists have rhapsodized over
it for four centuries.

No building has been more often described and sketched and painted
and photographed. For three hundred and fifty years it has appeared
as an illustration in the chapter on India in geographies, atlases
and gazetteers; it is used as a model in architectural text-books,
and of course is reproduced in every book that is written about
India. It has been modeled in gold, silver, alabaster, wax and
every other material that yields to the sculptor's will, yet no
counterfeit can ever give a satisfactory idea of its loveliness,
the purity of the material of which it is made, the perfection of
its proportions, the richness of its decorations and the exquisite
accuracy achieved by its builders. Some one has said that the
Moguls designed like giants and finished like jewelers, and that
epigram is emphasized in the Taj Mahal. Any portion of it, any
feature, if taken individually, would be enough to immortalize
the architect, for every part is equally perfect, equally chaste,
equally beautiful.

I shall not attempt to describe it. You can find descriptions
by great pens in many books. Sir Edwin Arnold has done it up
both in prose and poetry, and sprawled all over the dictionary
without conveying the faintest idea of its glories and loveliness.
It cannot be described. One might as well attempt to describe
a Beethoven symphony, for, if architecture be frozen music, as
some poet has said, the Taj Mahal is the supremest and sublimest
composition that human genius has produced. But, without using
architectural terms, or gushing any more about it, I will give
you a few plain facts.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF TAJ MAHAL]

The Taj Mahal stands, as I have already told you, at the bottom
of a lovely garden surrounded by groves of cypress trees, on the
bank of the River Jumna, opposite the great fortress of Agra,
where, from the windows of his palace, the king could always
see the snowwhite domes and minarets which cover the ashes of
his Arab wife. Its base is a marble terrace 400 feet square,
elevated eighteen feet above the level of the garden, with benches
arranged around so that one can sit and look and look and look
until its wonderful beauty soaks slowly into his consciousness;
until the soul is saturated. Rising from the terrace eighteen
feet is a marble pedestal or platform 313 feet square, each corner
being marked with a marble minaret 137 feet high; so slender,
so graceful, so delicate that you cannot conceive anything more
so. Within their walls are winding staircases by which one can
reach narrow balconies like those on lighthouses and look upon
the Taj from different heights and study its details from the top
as well as the bottom. The domes that crown these four minarets
are exact miniatures of that which covers the tomb.

On the east and on the west sides of the terrace are mosques built
after Byzantine designs of deep red sandstone, which accentuates
the purity of the marble of which the tomb is made in a most
effective manner. At any other place, with other surroundings,
these mosques would be regarded worthy of prolonged study and
unbounded admiration, but here they pass almost unnoticed. Like
the trees of the gardens and the river that flows at the foot
of the terrace, they are only an humble part of the frame which
incloses the great picture. They are intended to serve a purpose,
and they serve it well. In beauty they are surpassed only by
the tomb itself.

One of the mosques has recently been put in perfect repair and
the other is undergoing restoration, by order of Lord Curzon,
who believes that the architectural and archaeological monuments
of ancient India should be preserved and protected, and he is
spending considerable government money for that purpose. This
policy has been criticised by certain Christian missionaries,
who, like the iconoclasts of old, would tear down heathen temples
and desecrate heathen tombs. Many of the most beautiful examples
of ancient Hindu architecture have already been destroyed by
government authority, and the material of which they were built
has been utilized in the construction of barracks and fortresses.
You may not perhaps believe it, but there are still living in
India men who call themselves servants of the Lord, who would
erase every other monument that is in any way associated with
pagan worship or traditions. They would destroy even the Taj
Mahal itself, and then thank God for the opportunity of performing
such a barbarous act in His service.

Midway between the two red mosques rises a majestic pile of pure
white marble 186 feet square, with the corners cut off. It measures
eighty feet from its pedestal to its roof, and is surmounted
by a dome also eighty feet high, measuring from the roof, and
fifty-eight feet in diameter. Upon the summit of the dome is a
spire of gilded copper twenty-eight feet high, making the entire
structure 224 feet from the turf of the garden to the tip of
the spire. All of the domes are shaped like inverted turnips
after the Byzantine style. Four small ones surround the central
dome, exact duplicates and one-eighth of its size, and they are
arranged upon arches upon the flat roof of the building. From
each of the eight angles of the roof springs a delicate spire
or pinnacle, an exact duplicate of the great minarets in the
corners, each sixteen feet high, and they are so slender that
they look like alabaster pencils glistening in the sunshine.
The same duplication is carried out through the entire building.
The harmony is complete. Every tower, every dome, every arch, is
exactly like every other tower, dome and arch, differing only
in dimensions.

The building is entered on the north and south sides through
enormous pointed arches of perfect proportions reaching above
the roof and at each corner of the frames that inclose them is
another minaret, a miniature of the rest. Each of the six faces
of the remainder of the octagon is pierced by two similar arches,
one above the other, opening upon galleries which serve to break
the force of the sun, to moderate the heat and to subdue the
light. They form a sort of colonnade around the building above
and below, and are separated from the rotunda by screens of
perforated alabaster, as exquisite and delicate in design and
execution as Brussels point lace. The slabs of alabaster, 12 by
8 feet in size, are pierced with filigree work finely finished
as if they were intended to be worn as jewels upon the crown of
an empress. I am told that there is no stone work to compare
with this anywhere else on earth. Hence it was not in Athens, nor
in Rome, but in northern India that the chisel of the sculptor
attained its most perfect precision and achieved its greatest
triumphs. All of the light that reaches the interior is filtered
through this trellis work.

The rotunda is unbroken, fifty-eight feet in diameter and one
hundred and sixty feet from the floor to the apex of the dome.
Like every other part of the building, it is of the purest white
marble, inlaid with mosaics of precious stones. The walls, the
pillars, the wainscoting and the entire exterior as well as the
interior of the building are the same. You have doubtless seen
brooches, earrings, sleeve-buttons and other ornaments of Florentine
mosaic, with floral and other designs worked out with different
colored stones inlaid on black or white marble. You can buy paper
weights of that sort, and table tops which represent months of
labor and the most exact workmanship. They are very expensive
because of the skill and the time required to execute them. Well,
upon the walls of the tomb of the Princess Arjamand are about
two acres of surface covered with such mosaics as fine and as
perfect as if each setting were a jewel intended for a queen to
wear--turquoise, coral, garnet, carnelian, jasper, malachite,
agate, lapis lazuli, onyx, nacre, bloodstone, tourmaline, sardonyx
and a dozen other precious stones of different colors. The guide
book says that twenty-eight different varieties of stone, many of
them unknown to modern times, are inlaid in the walls of marble.

The most beautiful of these embellishments are inscriptions,
chiefly passages from the Koran and tributes of praise to "The
Exalted One of the Palace" who lies buried there, worked out
in Arabic and Persian characters, which are the most artistic
of any language, and lend themselves gracefully to decorative
purposes. The ninety-nine names of God, which pious Mussulmans
love to inscribe, appear in several places. Over the archway
of the entrance is an inscription in Persian characters which
reads like a paraphrase of the beatitudes:

"Only the Pure in Heart can Enter the Garden of God."

This arch was once inclosed by silver doors, which were carried
off by the Persians when they invaded India and sacked the palaces
of Agra in 1739.

There is no wood or metal in this building; not a nail or a screw
or a bolt of any sort. It is entirely of marble, mortised and
fastened with cement.

The acoustic properties of the rotunda are remarkable and a sound
uttered by a human voice will creep around its curves repeating
and repeating itself like the vibrations of the gongs of Burmese
temples, until it is lost in a whisper at the apex of the dome.
I should like to hear a violin there or a hymn softly sung by
some great artist.

In the center of the rotunda Shah Jehan and his beloved wife
are supposed to lie side by side in marble caskets, inlaid with
rich gems and embellished by infinite skill with lacelike tracery.
But their bodies are actually buried in the basement, and, the
guides assert, in coffins of solid gold. She for whom this tomb
was built occupies the center. Her lord and lover, because he
was a man and an emperor, was entitled to a larger sarcophagus,
a span loftier and a span longer. Both of the cenotaphs are
embellished with inlaid and carved Arabic inscriptions. Upon his,
in Persian characters, are written these words:

"His Majesty, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Shadow of Allah,
whose Court is now in Heaven; Saith Jesus, on whom be peace,
This World is a Bridge; Pass thou over it, Build not upon it!
It lasteth but an Hour; Devote its Minutes to thy Prayers; for
the Rest is Unseen and Unknown!"

No other person has such a tomb as this; nor pope, nor potentate,
nor emperor. Nowhere else have human pride and wealth and genius
struggled so successfully against the forgetfulness of man. The
Princess Arjamand has little place in history, but a devoted,
loving husband has rescued her name from oblivion, and has
immortalized her by making her dust the tenant of the most majestic
and beautiful of all human monuments.

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