DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27192#0328
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INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Book VII.
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 faqirs, 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 Taj Mahall, 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 Mughals 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 (Plate XXXIII.). It stands well on a large
square platform, 22 ft. in height, adorned with arches, whose piers
are ornamented with an inlay of white marble. The tomb itself
is an octagonal apartment, 47 ft. 4 in. across, crowned by a dome
of white marble, of very graceful contour externally. Four sides
of the octagon are occupied by the entrances ; the other four
smaller octagonal apartments, 23 ft. wide, are attached ; these
project from the facades of the central bays on each face, and
the amount of white marble on them, gives them prominence.
In the corner rooms are the tombs of Haji Begam and some
nine others of the royal race. These apartments make up a
building nearly square in plan, about 155 ft. each way, with
the angles slightly cut away.1 Its plan is in fact that after-
wards adopted at the Taj (Woodcut No. 433), 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 any-
thing 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, as will be seen from the photograph, a noble
tomb, and anywhere else must be considered a wonder.
1 In the upper storey of the building round the drum supporting the dome, are
rooms and pavilions once occupied by a college, long since deserted.
INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Book VII.
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 faqirs, 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 Taj Mahall, 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 Mughals 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 (Plate XXXIII.). It stands well on a large
square platform, 22 ft. in height, adorned with arches, whose piers
are ornamented with an inlay of white marble. The tomb itself
is an octagonal apartment, 47 ft. 4 in. across, crowned by a dome
of white marble, of very graceful contour externally. Four sides
of the octagon are occupied by the entrances ; the other four
smaller octagonal apartments, 23 ft. wide, are attached ; these
project from the facades of the central bays on each face, and
the amount of white marble on them, gives them prominence.
In the corner rooms are the tombs of Haji Begam and some
nine others of the royal race. These apartments make up a
building nearly square in plan, about 155 ft. each way, with
the angles slightly cut away.1 Its plan is in fact that after-
wards adopted at the Taj (Woodcut No. 433), 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 any-
thing 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, as will be seen from the photograph, a noble
tomb, and anywhere else must be considered a wonder.
1 In the upper storey of the building round the drum supporting the dome, are
rooms and pavilions once occupied by a college, long since deserted.