From Egypt to Japan

The glory of Agra dates from the reign of Akbar the Great who made it the capital of the Mogul Empire. He built the Fort, with its long line of castellated walls, rising above the river, and commanding the country around. Within this enclosure were buildings like a city, and open spaces with canals, among which were laid out gardens, blooming with flowers. On the river side of the Fort was a lofty terrace, on which stood the Palace, built of the purest marble. It was divided into a number of pavilions whose white walls and gilded domes glittered in the sun. Passing from one pavilion to another over tessellated pavements, we enter apartments rich in mosaics and all manner of precious stones. Along the walls are little kiosks or balconies, the windows of which are half closed by screens of marble, which yet are so exquisitely carved and pierced as to seem like veils of lace, drawn before the flashing eyes that looked out from behind them. Straying through these rich halls, one cannot but reproduce the scenes of three centuries ago, when Akbar ruled here in the midst of his court; when the beauties of his seraglio, gathered from all the East, sported in these gardens, and looked out from these latticed windows.

Of equal beauty with the palace is the mosque. It is called the Pearl Mosque, and a pearl indeed it is, such is the simplicity of outline, and such the exquisite and almost tender grace in every arch and column. Said Bishop Heber: "This spotless sanctuary, showing such a pure spirit of adoration, made me, a Christian, feel humbled when I considered that no architect of our religion had ever been able to produce anything equal to this temple of Allah."

But these costly buildings have but little use now. The Mosque is still here, but few are the Moslems who come to pray; and the palace is tenantless. The great Moguls are departed. Their last descendant was the late King of Delhi, who was compromised in the Great Mutiny, and passed the rest of his life as a state prisoner. Not a trace remains here nor at Delhi of the old Imperial grandeur. Yet once in a long while these old palaces serve a purpose to entertain some royal guest. Last week they were fitted up for a fête given to the Prince of Wales, when the stately apartments were turned into reception rooms and banqueting halls. It was a very brilliant spectacle, as the British officers in their uniforms mingled with the native princes glittering with diamonds. But it would seem as if the old Moguls must turn in their coffins to hear this sound of revelry in their vacant palaces, and to see the places where the Mohammedan ruled so long now filled by unbelievers.

Perhaps one gets a yet stronger impression of the magnificence of the Great Mogul in a visit to the Summer Palace of Akbar at Futtehpore-Sikri, so called from two villages embraced in the royal retreat. This was the Versailles of the old Moguls. It is over twenty miles from Agra, but starting early we were able to drive there and return the same day. The site is a rocky hill, which might have been chosen for a fortress. The outer wall enclosing it, with the two villages at its foot, is nine miles in extent. The buildings were on a scale to suit the wants of an Imperial Court – the plateau of the hill being laid off in a vast quadrangle, surrounded by palaces, and zenanas for the women of the Imperial household, and mosques and tombs. Perhaps the most exquisite building of all is a tomb in white marble – the resting place of Selim, a Moslem saint, a very holy shrine to the true believers; although the Mosque is far more imposing, since before it stands the loftiest gateway in the world. Around the hill are distributed barracks for troops, and stables for horses and camels and elephants. The open court in the centre of all these buildings is an esplanade large enough to draw up an army. Here they show the spot where Akbar used to mount his elephant, and here his troops filed before him, or subject princes came with long processions to pay him homage.

As this palace was built for a summer retreat, everything is designed for coolness; pavilions, covered overhead, screen from the sun, while open at the sides, they catch whatever summer air may be stirring. In studying the architecture of the Moors or the Moguls, one cannot but perceive, that in its first inception it has been modelled after forms familiar to their nomadic ancestors. The tribes of Central Asia first dwelt in tents, and when they came to have more fixed habitations built of wood or stone, they reproduced the same form, so that the canvas tent became the marble pavilion – just as the builders of the Gothic cathedrals caught the lines of their mighty arches from the interlacing branches of trees which made the lofty aisles of the forest. So the tribes of the desert, accustomed to live in tents, when endowed with empire, falling heir to the riches of the Indies, still preserved the style of their former life, and when they could no longer dwell in tents, dwelt in tabernacles. These palaces are almost all constructed on this type. There is one building of singular structure, five stories high, which is a series of terraces, all open at the side.

If we believe the tales of travellers and historians, nothing since the days of Babylon has equalled the magnificence of the Great Mogul. But magnificence in a sovereign generally means misery in his subjects. The wealth that is lavished on the court is wrung from the people. So it is said to have been with some of the successors of Akbar. The latest historian of Mussulman India2 says: "They were the most shameless tyrants that ever disgraced a throne. Mogul administration … was a monstrous system of oppression and extortion, which none but Asiatics could have practised or endured. Justice was a mockery. Magistrates could always be bribed; false witnesses could always be bought… The Hindoos were always in the hands of grinding task-masters, foreigners who knew not how to pity or to spare."

But Akbar was not merely a magnificent Oriental potentate – he was truly a great king. A Mohammedan himself, he was free from Moslem fanaticism and bigotry. Those conquerors of India had a difficult task (which has vexed their English successors after two centuries), to rule a people of a different race and a different religion. It was harder for the Moslem than for the Christian, because his creed was more intolerant; it made it his duty to destroy those whom he could not convert. The first law of the Koran was the extermination of idolatry, but the Hindoos were the grossest of idolaters. How then could a Mohammedan ruler establish his throne without exterminating the inhabitants? But the Moslems – like many other conquerors – learned to bear the ills which they could not remove. Necessity taught them the wisdom of toleration. In this humane policy they were led by the example of Akbar, who, though a Mussulman, was not a bigot, and thought it a pity that subtle questions of belief should divide inhabitants of the same country. He admitted Hindoos to a share in his government, and endeavored by complete tolerance to extinguish religious hatreds. He had even the ambition to be a religious reformer, and tried to blend the old faith with the new, and to make an eclectic religion by putting together the systems of Zoroaster, of the Brahmins, and of Christianity, while retaining some of the Mohammedan forms. But he could not convert even his own Hindoo wives, of whom he had one or two, and built a house for each, in Hindoo architecture, with altars for idol worship. What impression then could he make outside of the circle of his court?

But greatness commands our homage, even though it sometimes undertakes tasks beyond human power. Akbar, though he could not inspire others with his own spirit of justice and toleration, deserves a place in history as the greatest sovereign that ever sat in the seat of the Great Mogul. And therefore, when in the Fort at Agra I stood beside the large slab of black marble, on which he was wont to sit to administer justice to his people, it was with the same feeling that one would seek out the oak of Vincennes, under which St. Louis sat for the same purpose; and at Secundra, a few miles from Agra, we visited his tomb, as on another continent we had visited the tomb of Frederick the Great, and of Napoleon.

But the jewel of India – the Koh-i-noor of its beauty – is the Taj, the tomb built by the Emperor Shah Jehan, the grandson of Akbar, for his wife, whom he loved with an idolatrous affection, and on her deathbed promised to rear to her memory such a mausoleum as had never been erected before. To carry out his purpose he gathered architects from all countries, who rivalled each other in the extravagance and costliness of their designs. The result was a structure which cost fabulous sums of money (the whole empire being placed under contribution for it, as were the Jews for the Temple of Solomon), and employed twenty thousand workmen for seventeen years. The building thus erected is one of the most famous in the world – like the Alhambra or St. Peter's – and of which enthusiastic travellers are apt to say that it is worth going around the world to see. This would almost discourage the attempt to describe it, but I will try and give some faint idea of its marvellous beauty.

But how can I convey to others what is but a picture in my memory? Descriptions of architecture are apt to be vague unless aided by pictorial illustrations. Mere figures and measurements are dry and cold. The most I shall aim at will be to give a general (but I hope not indistinct) impression of it. For this let us approach it gradually.

It stands on the banks of the Jumna, a mile below the Fort at Agra. As you approach it, it is not exposed abruptly to view, but is surrounded by a garden. You enter under a lofty gateway, and before you is an avenue of cypresses a third of a mile long, whose dark foliage is a setting for a form of dazzling whiteness at the end. That is the Taj. It stands, not on the level of your eye, but on a double terrace; the first, of red sandstone, twenty feet high, and a thousand feet broad; at the extremities of which stand two mosques, of the same dark stone, facing each other. Midway between rises the second terrace, of marble, fifteen feet high, and three hundred feet square, on the corners of which stand four marble minarets. In the centre of all, thus "reared in air," stands the Taj. It is built of marble – no other material than this of pure and stainless white were fit for a purpose so sacred. It is a hundred and fifty feet square (or rather it is eight-sided, since the corners are truncated), and surmounted by a dome, which rises nearly two hundred feet above the pavement below.

These figures rather belittle the Taj, or at least disappoint those who looked for great size. There are many larger buildings in the world. But that which distinguishes it from all others, and gives it a rare and ideal beauty, is the union of majesty and grace. This is the peculiar effect of Saracenic architecture. The slender columns, the springing arches, the swelling domes, the tall minarets, all combine to give an impression of airy lightness, which is not destroyed even when the foundations are laid with massive solidity. But it is in the finish of their structures that they excelled all the world. Bishop Heber said truly: "They built like Titans and finished like jewellers." This union of two opposite features makes the beauty of the Taj. While its walls are thick and strong, they are pierced by high arched windows which relieve their heaviness. Vines and arabesques running over the stone work give it the lightness of foliage, of trees blossoming with flowers. In the interior there is an extreme and almost feminine grace, as if here the strength of man would pay homage to the delicacy of woman. Enclosing the sacred spot is a screen of marble, carved into a kind of fretwork, and so pure and white that light shines through it as through alabaster, falling softly on that which is within. The Emperor, bereaved of his wife, lavished riches on her very dust, casting precious stones upon her tomb, as if he were placing a string of pearls around her neck. It is overrun with vines and flowers, cut in stone, and set with onyx and jasper and lapis lazuli, carnelians and turquoises, and chalcedonies and sapphires.

But the body rests in the crypt below. We descend a few steps and stand by the very sarcophagus in which all that loveliness is enshrined. Another sarcophagus contains the body of her husband. Their tombs were covered with fresh flowers, a perpetual tribute to that love which was so strong even on the throne; to those who were thus united in life, and in death are not divided.

Here sentiment comes in to affect our sense of the beauty of the place. If it were not for the touching history connected with it, I could not agree with those who pronounce the Taj the most beautiful building in the world. Merely as a building, it does not "overcome" me so much as another marble structure – the Cathedral of Milan. I could not say with Bishop Heber that the mosques of Islam are more beautiful, or more in harmony with the spirit of devotion, than Christian churches or cathedrals. But the Taj is not a mosque, it is a tomb – a monument to the dead. And that gives it a tender interest, which spiritualizes the cold marble, and makes it more than a building – a poem and a dream.

This impression grew upon us the more we saw it. On our last night in Agra we drove there to take our last view by moonlight. All slept peacefully on the banks of the Jumna. Slowly we walked through the long avenue of dark cypresses, that stood like ranks of mourners waiting for the dead to pass, their tops waving gently in the night wind, as if breathing a soft requiem over the departed. Mounting the terrace we stood again before the Taj, rising into the calm blue heavens. A few nights before the Prince of Wales had been here, and the interior had been illuminated. As we had not seen it then, we had engaged attendants with blue lights, who gave us an illumination of our own. It was a weird scene as these swarthy natives, with naked arms, held aloft their torches, whose blue flames, flaring and flickering, cast a spectral light upward into the dim vault above.

To add to the ghostly effect, we heard whispers above us, as if there were unseen witnesses. It was the echo of our own voices, but one starts to hear himself in such a place. The dome is a whispering gallery; and as we stood beside the tomb, and spoke in a low voice (not to disturb the sleep of the dead), our words seemed to be repeated. Any sound at the tomb – a sigh of pity, or a plaintive melody – rising upward, comes back again, – faintly indeed, yet distinctly and sweetly – as if the very air trembled in sympathy, repeating the accents of love and of despair, or as if unseen spirits were floating above, and singing the departing soul to its rest.

Then we went down once more into the crypt below, where sleeps the form of the beautiful empress, and of Shah Jehan, who built this monument for her, at her side. The place was dark, and the lights in the hands of the attendants cast but a feeble glimmer, but this deep shadow and silence suited the tenor of our thoughts, and we lingered, reluctant to depart from the resting-place of one so much beloved.

As we came out the moon was riding high overhead, flooding the marble pile with beauty. Round and round we walked, looking up at arch and dome and minaret. At such an hour the Taj was so pale and ghostlike, that it did not seem like a building reared by human hands, but to have grown where it stood – like a night-blooming Cereus, rising slowly in the moonlight – lifting its domes and pinnacles (like branches growing heavenward) towards that world which is the home of the love which it was to preserve in perpetual memory.

With such thoughts we kept our eyes fixed on that glittering vision, as if we feared that even as we gazed it might vanish out of our sight. Below us the Jumna, flowing silently, seemed like an image of human life as it glided by. And so at last we turned to depart, and bade farewell to the Taj, feeling that we should never look on it again; but hoping that it might stand for ages to tell its history of faithful love to future generations. Flow on, sweet Jumna, by the marble walls, reflecting the moonbeams in thy placid breast; and in thy gentle murmurs whispering evermore of Love and Death, and Love that cannot die!