09-12-2005, 08:55 PM
Book Extract form Pioneer, 11 Sept. 2005
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Age of Splendour
The following is an extract from John Lall's Taj Mahal and Mughal Agra, published by Lotus, Roli Books:
TAJ MAHAL AND MUGHAL AGRA, BY JOHN LALL , PHOTOS BY DN DUBE ROLI BOOKS, RS 395
<b>More stories, apocryphal and true, have been inspired by the Taj Mahal than any other monument in India. Some of these have been absorbed in the literature of the Taj and should be considered before going any further.</b> Hardest to die was the myth, avidly taken up in the West, that the architect was the Venetian Geronimo Veroneo.
European authors gave it a decent burial, when irrefutable evidence became available that the story propagated by Father Manrique following a visit to Agra in 1640 was at best a fine effort of imagination. Veroneo, who was a jeweller, had died in Lahore earlier in the year, and was buried in Agra. His unpretentious gravestone makes no such claim. Mundy, Tavemier and others, who were in Agra while the Taj was being built, or soon afterwards, never mentioned Veroneo as the architect, or anyone else for that matter.
Currency was then given to the attribution to Isa Muhammad Effendi, an architect reputedly sent by the Sultan of Turkey. Albeit from the Islamic world, Effendi was still not a Hindustani. This bold claim was made in a Persian manuscript of 1878 by Mughal Beg entitled Tarikh-i-Taj Mahal, now in the Taj museum. Though the author claims that his manuscript was based on earlier works, these are not specified. Established authorities regard the manuscript with undisguised suspicion.
<b>It was written at a time when foreign art historians had convinced themselves that the best in Mughal architecture was Saracenic in inspiration. The term itself raised the question of what Saracenic was. A number of copies of the manuscript were made, and there are grounds for believing that Mughal Beg was encouraged in his enterprise by the foreign principal of a local college.</b> The claim that Isa Muhammad Effendi was the architect lacks any contemporary authority or corroboration, and must be viewed as untenable in the light of the positive evidence pointing to Ustad Ahmad Lahori.
<b>Credulity and the Western obsession with establishing the identity of a supposed architect was taken to even more absurd lengths.</b> Sleeman, who had been in India since 1810, confidently asserted in his Rambles and Recollections, published in 1844, that the Taj and the palaces in Agra and Delhi had been designed by Austin de Bordeaux, 'a Frenchman of great talent and merit, in whose ability and integrity, the emperor placed much reliance.' Austin, a jeweller, is known to have been making a living by his wits in Agra during the early years of Shahjahan's reign.
He died in 1632, while work on the Taj commenced after the emperor's return to Agra in June that year. Not to be outdone, he was then credited with creation of a gem-encrusted solid gold rail around the empress' cenotaph in the Taj. The cenotaph was not placed in position until 1636 and there was no question of enclosing it until long after the Frenchman had died. Peter Mundy's claim that there was already about her tomb 'a rail of gold' (in 1632) can only refer to the temporary grave.
A tale so picturesque that one might be tempted to allow it to stand has found its way into the literature of the Taj. Mughal Beg's was not the only manuscript to mysteriously appear in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first edition of Guide to the Taj in Agra was published in 1854 under the initials J.T.N. A subsequent edition was published in Lahore in 1862, It claims to have been based on an unnamed Persian manuscript, which relates the most touching of all the stories connected with the Taj.
The Empress Mumtaz Mahal, who was enceinte, heard her unborn child cry out while still in her womb. 'When a child cries before its birth,' she confided to the emperor, 'the mother always dies; therefore I must prepare to take leave of this world.' She made him promise never to remarry and to 'build over me such a beautiful tomb as the world never saw'.
There is no mention of this tragic tale in the Badshah Nama and Amal-i-Saleh. Contemporary chroniclers were never loathe to allude to the miraculous and supernatural. The silence of the two authoritative biographers suggests, at any rate, that they never heard of it. Nevertheless, though he survived Mumtaz Mahal by twenty-five years. Shah Jahan never took another wife, and no one will dispute that his monument to the 'light of the Palace' far exceeds in beauty, any other tomb ever made.
The French jeweller, Jean-Baptiste Tavemier, relates yet another story which has proved much more enduring than most. 'Shah Jahan,' he says, 'began to build his own tomb on the other side of the river, but the war with his sons interrupted the plan and Aurangzeb, who reigns at present, is not disposed to complete it.' A surprising statement, because there was nothing to complete.
Tavemier was in India in 1640-41 and again for two months in 1665, thirteen years after the last stone had been laid in the forecourt and nearly twenty after the Taj itself was complete. Shah Jahan had ample time for this vainglorious enterprise, if he ever seriously intended it, before he was imprisoned by Aurangzeb. Neither Mulla Abdul Hamid Lahori nor Muhammad Saleh breathe a word about a second mausoleum. The truth is that Shah Jahan's attention had been diverted to Delhi, where he started building Shahjahanabad in 1638, ten years before the Taj itself was complete.
Mehtab Burj, across the river, which some writers have picked on as evidence of a start, with whoops of joy normally reserved for discoveries of bone fragments of the earliest homo sapiens, is nothing more than the last remaining vestige of one of the gardens made in Babur's reign. The burj (tower) is hardly 3.66 metres in height as against 13.11 metres of the riverside towers of the Taj. Remains of Humayun's masjid are a little further off. Whatever Shah Jahan's intentions might have been, good sense, no less than taste, spared posterity a rival to the Taj.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Age of Splendour
The following is an extract from John Lall's Taj Mahal and Mughal Agra, published by Lotus, Roli Books:
TAJ MAHAL AND MUGHAL AGRA, BY JOHN LALL , PHOTOS BY DN DUBE ROLI BOOKS, RS 395
<b>More stories, apocryphal and true, have been inspired by the Taj Mahal than any other monument in India. Some of these have been absorbed in the literature of the Taj and should be considered before going any further.</b> Hardest to die was the myth, avidly taken up in the West, that the architect was the Venetian Geronimo Veroneo.
European authors gave it a decent burial, when irrefutable evidence became available that the story propagated by Father Manrique following a visit to Agra in 1640 was at best a fine effort of imagination. Veroneo, who was a jeweller, had died in Lahore earlier in the year, and was buried in Agra. His unpretentious gravestone makes no such claim. Mundy, Tavemier and others, who were in Agra while the Taj was being built, or soon afterwards, never mentioned Veroneo as the architect, or anyone else for that matter.
Currency was then given to the attribution to Isa Muhammad Effendi, an architect reputedly sent by the Sultan of Turkey. Albeit from the Islamic world, Effendi was still not a Hindustani. This bold claim was made in a Persian manuscript of 1878 by Mughal Beg entitled Tarikh-i-Taj Mahal, now in the Taj museum. Though the author claims that his manuscript was based on earlier works, these are not specified. Established authorities regard the manuscript with undisguised suspicion.
<b>It was written at a time when foreign art historians had convinced themselves that the best in Mughal architecture was Saracenic in inspiration. The term itself raised the question of what Saracenic was. A number of copies of the manuscript were made, and there are grounds for believing that Mughal Beg was encouraged in his enterprise by the foreign principal of a local college.</b> The claim that Isa Muhammad Effendi was the architect lacks any contemporary authority or corroboration, and must be viewed as untenable in the light of the positive evidence pointing to Ustad Ahmad Lahori.
<b>Credulity and the Western obsession with establishing the identity of a supposed architect was taken to even more absurd lengths.</b> Sleeman, who had been in India since 1810, confidently asserted in his Rambles and Recollections, published in 1844, that the Taj and the palaces in Agra and Delhi had been designed by Austin de Bordeaux, 'a Frenchman of great talent and merit, in whose ability and integrity, the emperor placed much reliance.' Austin, a jeweller, is known to have been making a living by his wits in Agra during the early years of Shahjahan's reign.
He died in 1632, while work on the Taj commenced after the emperor's return to Agra in June that year. Not to be outdone, he was then credited with creation of a gem-encrusted solid gold rail around the empress' cenotaph in the Taj. The cenotaph was not placed in position until 1636 and there was no question of enclosing it until long after the Frenchman had died. Peter Mundy's claim that there was already about her tomb 'a rail of gold' (in 1632) can only refer to the temporary grave.
A tale so picturesque that one might be tempted to allow it to stand has found its way into the literature of the Taj. Mughal Beg's was not the only manuscript to mysteriously appear in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first edition of Guide to the Taj in Agra was published in 1854 under the initials J.T.N. A subsequent edition was published in Lahore in 1862, It claims to have been based on an unnamed Persian manuscript, which relates the most touching of all the stories connected with the Taj.
The Empress Mumtaz Mahal, who was enceinte, heard her unborn child cry out while still in her womb. 'When a child cries before its birth,' she confided to the emperor, 'the mother always dies; therefore I must prepare to take leave of this world.' She made him promise never to remarry and to 'build over me such a beautiful tomb as the world never saw'.
There is no mention of this tragic tale in the Badshah Nama and Amal-i-Saleh. Contemporary chroniclers were never loathe to allude to the miraculous and supernatural. The silence of the two authoritative biographers suggests, at any rate, that they never heard of it. Nevertheless, though he survived Mumtaz Mahal by twenty-five years. Shah Jahan never took another wife, and no one will dispute that his monument to the 'light of the Palace' far exceeds in beauty, any other tomb ever made.
The French jeweller, Jean-Baptiste Tavemier, relates yet another story which has proved much more enduring than most. 'Shah Jahan,' he says, 'began to build his own tomb on the other side of the river, but the war with his sons interrupted the plan and Aurangzeb, who reigns at present, is not disposed to complete it.' A surprising statement, because there was nothing to complete.
Tavemier was in India in 1640-41 and again for two months in 1665, thirteen years after the last stone had been laid in the forecourt and nearly twenty after the Taj itself was complete. Shah Jahan had ample time for this vainglorious enterprise, if he ever seriously intended it, before he was imprisoned by Aurangzeb. Neither Mulla Abdul Hamid Lahori nor Muhammad Saleh breathe a word about a second mausoleum. The truth is that Shah Jahan's attention had been diverted to Delhi, where he started building Shahjahanabad in 1638, ten years before the Taj itself was complete.
Mehtab Burj, across the river, which some writers have picked on as evidence of a start, with whoops of joy normally reserved for discoveries of bone fragments of the earliest homo sapiens, is nothing more than the last remaining vestige of one of the gardens made in Babur's reign. The burj (tower) is hardly 3.66 metres in height as against 13.11 metres of the riverside towers of the Taj. Remains of Humayun's masjid are a little further off. Whatever Shah Jahan's intentions might have been, good sense, no less than taste, spared posterity a rival to the Taj.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->