The carving in marble and red
sandstone is wonderful. Akbar must have been a broad-minded man, for
we found paintings of the Annunciation side by side with pictures of
the Hindu god Ganesh. It is intensely interesting to see the place
just as it was hundreds of years ago. In the great Mosque Quadrangle
there is a marble mausoleum, delicately carved, a priceless piece of
work in mother-of-pearl, erected to Akbar's high priest; and our guide
was his lineal descendant, glad to get five rupees for his trouble!
We lunched in the Government bungalow, a comfortable place, not
glaringly out of keeping with the surroundings, and then motored to
Akbar's tomb--another piece of colossal magnificence. I was awed by
it. Out of the glaring sunshine we went down a long dark passage to a
great vault, where the air was cold with the coldness of death. It
was completely dark except for one ray of light falling on the plain
marble tomb. An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament
which echoed round and round the vault. The Mohammedans and the Scots
have a similar passion for deaths and funerals!
Lastly, in its fitting order, we drove to the Taj Mahal.
You know the story? I have just been reading about it in Steevens's
book. You know how Shah Jehan, grandson of Akbar, first Mogul Emperor
of Hindustan, loved and married the beautiful Persian Arjmand
Banu,--called Mumtaz-i-Mahal,--and when she died he, in his grief,
swore that she should have the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld,
and for seventeen years he built the Taj Mahal? You know how after
thirty years his son rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close
prisoner for seven years in the Gem Mosque, where his daughter
Jehanara attended him and would not leave him.
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