Across India; Or, Live Boys in the Far East

by Oliver Optic

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE MAGNIFICENT MAUSOLEUM OF AGRA

  Several hotels were available on the arrival of the travellers at Agra, andthey were domiciled at Lawrie's. The journey was made in an afternoon, andwas through a densely populated territory, so that the trip was veryenjoyable. After dinner the party assembled in a parlor provided for theiruse; and Lord Tremlyn gave a talk, for he objected to the formality of alecture. He seated himself in an easy-chair, and took from his pocket alittle book, to which he occasionally referred.

  "Agra, on the whole, is the handsomest city of Upper India, though ofcourse there may be some difference of opinion in this matter," he began."It is eight hundred and forty-one miles north-west of Calcutta, and onehundred and forty south-east of Delhi. Like Delhi, it is on the Jumna,which is here crossed by a floating bridge. One of the most prominentbuildings is the fortress of Akbar, and you must know something of thissovereign in order to understand Agra.

  "He was known as Akbar the Great, the Mogul emperor of India, and thegreatest Asiatic monarch of modern times. He was the son of Houmayoun,whose mausoleum you visited at Delhi. The father was robbed of his throne,and retreated to Persia; and it was on the way there that Akbar was born,in 1542. After an exile of twelve years, Houmayoun recovered his throne,but lost his life within a year after his return. The government wascommitted to the care of a regent, who became a tyrant; and the youngprince took possession of it himself at the age of eighteen.

  "At this time only a few provinces were subject to the rule of his father;but in a dozen years Akbar had made himself master of all the country northof the Vindhya Mountains, or of a line drawn from Baroda to Calcutta,though he was not so fortunate in subduing the southern portion of thepeninsula. He was a great conqueror; yet, what is not so common with themighty rulers of the world, past or present, he was a wise and humanemonarch, and governed his realm with wisdom and vigor. His reign was themost unparalleled, for his justice, energy, and progressive character, ofany in the East. In this manner he made his empire the greatest of the agein which he lived.

  "He fostered commerce by the construction of roads, by the establishment ofan excellent police system, and introduced a uniform system of weights andmeasures. He looked after the administration of his viceroys in hisnumerous provinces, permitted no extortion on the part of his officers, andsaw that justice was impartially meted out to all classes. He was aMohammedan, but he was tolerant of all the prevailing sects in religion.

  "He gave the Hindus entire freedom of worship; though far in advance of hissuccessors, he prohibited cruel customs, such as the burning of widows, andother barbarous practices. He founded schools and encouraged literature. Heinquired into the various forms of religion, and even sent for Portuguesemissionaries at Goa to explain the Christian faith to him. From the variousbeliefs he made up a kind of eclectic religion; but it was not a successoutside of his palace. A history of his reign of fifty years was written byhis chief minister. Akbar died in 1605, and was interred in a beautifulmausoleum, near the city.

  "With the ordinary sights of India you are already somewhat familiar; and,aside from what you may see in any city here, there is not much to interestyou, with the grand exception of the Taj, and some of the mausoleums, ofwhich I will say nothing, as we are now to visit them."

  The company retired early, and after breakfast the next morning thecarriages were at the door. In the first one were Captain Ringgold, Mrs.Belgrave, and Sir Modava. Lord Tremlyn had more than once manifested adesire to be in the same carriage with Miss Blanche; and he went with herand Louis on this occasion, while Mr. and Mrs. Woolridge invited GeneralNoury to accompany them.

  "Akbar made Agra the capital of the Mogul Empire," said Sir Modava, as thecarriage started. "He changed its old name to Akbarabad, and the nativescall it so to this day."

  "The termination of that name seems to be very common in India, asAllahabad, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad," added the commander.

  "In the Hindu, _abad_ means a town or a village; and if you cut offthat ending you will find the person or place for whom it was named, asAkbar-abad."

  "Precisely as it is in our country, where we have Morris-town, Allen-town,Morgan-town, and a thousand others," added the captain.

  "After the death of Akbar his successors reigned in Delhi. The Mogul Empirecame to an end in 1761; and Agra was sacked by the Jats, and later theMahrattas completed the destruction they had begun. It was captured fromScindia in 1803 by the English under Lord Lake, and has since remained intheir possession. In all these disasters its population, which had beenseven hundred thousand, dropped to ten thousand; but under British rule itrecovered some of its former prosperity, and it is now about one hundredand seventy thousand."

  "If a man wants to build a house here he has only to dig for the material,for not far down he will find the stone and brick of the structures thatcrumbled into the earth after the death of the great emperor. We are nowapproaching the fortress, or the citadel as it is oftener called. It is asort of acropolis, for it contains palaces, mosques, halls of justice, andother buildings."

  The carriages stopped at the principal gate, opposite to which is themosque of Jummah Musjid, or the Cathedral Mosque. About all the greatstructures here are built of red sandstone, with marble bands on many ofthem, so that it is hardly necessary to mention the material, unless itvaries from the rule. This mosque is a fine one, mounted on a marbleesplanade or platform, like most buildings of this description.

  Crossing the drawbridge, the visitors came to the Palace of Justice, builtby Akbar. It is six hundred feet long, enclosed by a colonnade of arches,like a cloister. It is now used as a military storeroom, divided by brickwalls, and filled with cannon and shot. The English have made a sort ofmuseum here; and the superior officer who did the honors to his lordshipshowed them the throne of Akbar, a long marble seat, inlaid with preciousstones, with a graceful canopy of the same material over it; and the boysthought he would have had a more comfortable seat if he had put off theperiod of his reign to the present time.

  The gates of Somnath, twelve feet high, were beautiful pieces of carving.They once guarded the entrance to the temple of Krishna, in Goojerat; butin the tenth century they were carried off by Sultan Mahmoud, of Ghuzni, inAfghanistan. He captured Somnath, and destroyed all the idols. The Brahminsoffered him immense bribes if he would spare the statue of Krishna; but hespurned the money, and destroyed the image with his own hands. He foundthat it was hollow, and filled with jewels of great value.

  When the English conquered Afghanistan, Lord Ellenborough sent the gates toAgra; but some think they were not the gates of the temple, but ofMahmoud's tomb, for they were made of a wood that does not grow in India,and they are not of Hindu workmanship. From the museum the party walked tothe imperial palace of Akbar, still in an excellent state of preservation.Some of the apartments, especially the bath-room of the monarch, made thevisitors think of the Arabian Nights.

  The great black marble slab on which Akbar sat to administer justice waspointed out. When one of the Jat chiefs seated himself upon it, the storygoes, it cracked, and blood flowed from the fracture. Lord Ellenboroughtried the experiment, and the stone broke into two pieces. The Mosque ofPearls is a small building of white marble on a rose-colored platform. Itis considered by experts the finest piece of architecture in the fortress.Nothing could be simpler, nothing grander. Bishop Heber visited it andwrote this of it:--

  "This spotless sanctuary, showing such a pure spirit of adoration, made me,a Christian, feel humbled, when I considered that no architect of ourreligion had ever been able to produce anything equal to this temple ofAllah."

  Following the Jumna, the carriages reached the Taj, the wonder and glory ofall India. It was built by the Emperor Shah Jehan, as a mausoleum for theEmpress Mumtazi Mahal. She was not only beautiful, but famous for mentalendowments; and the emperor had so much love and admiration for her that hedetermined to erect to her memory the most beautiful
monument that had everbeen constructed by any prince. It was begun in 1630, and twenty thousandworkmen were employed upon it for seventeen years. History says that onehundred and forty thousand cartloads of pink sandstone and marble werebrought from the quarries of Rajputana; and every province of the empirefurnished precious stones to adorn it. Its cost was from ten to fifteenmillions of dollars.

  The golden crescent of the Taj is two hundred and seventy feet above thelevel of the river. The magnificent temple is placed in the centre of agarden nine hundred and sixty feet long by three hundred and thirty inwidth, filled with avenues flanked with cypress-trees, and planted withflowers, on a terrace of sandstone. In the centre of this garden is amarble platform, two hundred and eighty-five feet on all sides, and fifteenfeet high, which may be called the pedestal of the mosque. The principalentrance to the garden is more elaborate and beautiful than the fronts ofmany noted mosques, for it is adorned with towers crowned with cupolas.

  Entering the enclosure, and walking along the avenue of cypress-trees, oneobtains his first view of the great dome of the Taj. It looks like aboutthree-fourths of a globe, capped with a slender spire. From this point,through the trees, may be seen a forest of minarets, cupolas, towers, andinferior domes. The mausoleum is in the form of an irregular octagon, thelongest side being one hundred and twenty feet in length. Each facade has alofty Saracenic arch, in which is an entrance.

  The interior surpasses the exterior in magnificence, the ceiling, walls,and tombstones being a mass of mosaics. The resting-place of the empressand Shah Jehan is in the centre of the edifice, enclosed by a marblescreen. Some experts who have examined the building thoroughly are unableto find any architectural faults, though perhaps others would be moresuccessful. The party visited several other mosques and mausoleums; butnothing could compare with the Taj. The commander suggested that they oughtto have visited it last, as the pie or pudding comes in after the fish ormeats at Von Blonk Park.

  The members of the party were unable to say enough in praise of the Taj,and no one seems to be in danger of exaggerating its beauty and itswonders. On their return to the hotel, they seated themselves in theirparlor, and talked till dinner-time about the mausoleum, for they had manyquestions to ask of the viscount and the Hindu gentleman.

  "There seemed to be two other mosques back of the mausoleum," said Mrs.Belgrave; "we did not visit them."

  "The Mohammedan traditions require that a mosque should be erected inconnection with every mortuary temple," replied Sir Modava. "Isa Mohammed,a later emperor, built one at the western end of the terrace. It was abeautiful building with three domes, in keeping with the Taj. But thebuilder found that it gave a one-sided appearance to the view; and heerected the one on the east end, to balance the other and restore theproportions. Either of them is equal to the finest mosque in Cairo orConstantinople."

  "That was an expensive method of making things regular," added thecommander. "Some one spoke in Delhi of a durbar in connection with Agra. Ithink it was Mr. Meerza."

  General Noury laughed at this title; for it sounded funny to him, appliedto an Oriental, and the captain had forgotten the rest of the name.

  "Abbas-Meerza, we call him, without any 'mister,'" he added.

  "I will try to remember it," replied the commander. "But what is a durbar?Is it something good to eat?"

  "They do not eat it here, and probably it would be indigestible if theycould do so," continued Sir Modava. "A durbar is a very important event inIndia, but is not eatable. It is an occasion at which the native princesacknowledge the sovereignty of the Queen of England. In 1866 the most notedone took place at Agra, a full description of which would require a longtime. For the first time after the establishment of the Empire of India,the governor-general, representing the empress, received the homage oftwenty-six sovereign princes. It was an act of submission. The ceremoniesoccupied many days; and kings, maharajahs, rajahs, and other princes bowedto the throne of the sovereign. It was a tremendous occasion; and it was afestival honored by banquets, processions, and royal gatherings. I will geta book for you, Captain Ringgold, when we reach Calcutta, from which youmay read a full account of the affair. It grew out of an ancient Indiancustom, and many of them on a small scale have occurred."

  The tourists spent another day at Agra, and, though they had not exhaustedthe sights of the place, the commander decided that they could remain nolonger, and they left on the following day for Cawnpore.