Taj Mahal

“ About six miles before the traveler reaches the city of Agra the dome and minarets of the world-renowned Taj Mahal burst upon his view from behind a grove of fruit-trees near the road. The effect is wonderful! The long-anticipated pleasure of beholding earth's most beautiful shrine is now within his reach, and the gratified and delighted sight rests upon this first view of its harmony of parts, its faultless congregation of architectural beauties, with a kind of ecstasy. ”

“ THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL TOMB
It cannot be denied that the Taj Mahal (tahzh mah-hahl ́) owes much of its beauty to its setting. Not merely has it the contrast of the brilliant sky above, but also the deep green of the gardens at its feet, and more than this the four tall, graceful minarets standing like sentinels at the corners of the marble terrace on which the tomb is placed. The interior is scarcely less impressive than this outside view. ”

“ Pushing a cushioned chair close to the window, she wrapped her shawl around her, put her feet on the round of a neighboring chair, to keep them from the icy floor and gave herself up to the perusal of the volume.
The sun went down in a wintry sky; the solemn red light burning on the funeral pyre of day streamed through the undraped windows, flushed the fretted facade of the Taj Mahal, glowed on the marble floor, and warmed and brightened the serene, lovely face of the earnest young student. ”

“ Humanity heaves a sigh of relief to know that this is the last. The house of Tamerlane is no more; their Dewan Khass is in ruins; their pomp, and glory, and power, have gone down to the grave forever.
The Taj Mahal viewed from the River Jumna.
From these, with all their crimes, changes, and sufferings, we turn now to the peaceful and lovely monument which is India's architectural glory, and one of earth's great wonders—the existence of which is probably the only valid apology remaining for the vast revenues squandered by these irresponsible despots during so many hundred years. ”

“ The great red bastions of the Fort frown over the same placid Jumna, and watch each morning the pearly dome of the Taj Mahal rise like a moon in the dawn-glow, shimmer through the parching glare of an Indian day, and at eve sink, rosy, into the purple shadows of swiftly-falling night, as they did when Shah Jehan sat “in the sunset-lighted balcony with his eyes fixed on the snow-white pile at the bend of the river, and his heart full of consolation of having wrought for her he loved, through the span of twenty years, a work that she had surely accepted at the last.” ”

“ Hideous people, with staring eyes, dripping the blood-red slime of the cinnabar-mines—leprosy, filth, vermin—
His palace! It stood out above the carmine ruck like a cube of purest ivory in a bleeding wound. Its marble outrivaled the whiteness of the Taj Mahal. It was a thing of snow-white beauty, like a dove poising for flight above a gory battlefield. And it was crowned by a dome of lapis lazuli, bluer than the South Pacific under a melting sun! But its base, Peter knew, was stained red, a blood-red which had seeped up and up from the carmine clay. ”

“ No two are alike; yet all are beautiful. And this quality lies not merely in size and proportions, in design and decoration, but in the appeal that each one makes to the mind as well as to the eye. Thus the Taj Mahal fairly speaks of human remembrance, the Alhambra is the embodiment of oriental luxury, Amiens affords a majestic picture of religious power, and Salisbury of quiet Christian worship, Chambord conjures up visions of gay kings and courtiers, while New York in its City Hall possesses a worthy monument of civic interest and pride. ”

“ One is called the Moti Musjid, or Pearl Mosque, and travellers say that it is exquisite. It is all of marble and has three beautiful domes like immense bubbles floating in the air.
The gem of Agra, though, is the Taj Mahal, a big tomb built centuries ago by one of the rulers, Shah Jehan, for his wife, whom he dearly loved. Just think, this building is standing now, after all these hundreds of years, and is still perfect! It has a beautiful big dome and a number of little ones, besides minarets and towers, and it looks like a marvellous dream building or a palace made by the fairies. ”

“ I am no more capable of describing it than I would have been capable of building it; you must see it for yourself. It alone is worth coming to India to see.
Leaving the Taj Mahal dazed and dizzy with beauty, I was hailed by a voice that sounded familiar, and turning round I saw—an incongruous figure in that Arabian Nights garden—our old friend of the Scotia, the Rocking Horse Fly. ”

“ Thinking of the two in the garden, my mood was very kind, very conniving. How foolish after all were my cherry-stone theories of taste and temperament before that uncalculating thing which sways a world and builds a Taj Mahal! Was it probable that Arjamand and her Emperor had loved fastidiously, and yet how they had loved! ”

“ What were the thoughts of the designers, and of Shah Jahan himself, when they resolved to raise a monument of eternal love to the Crown of the Palace—Taj Mahal? Surely not only of a mausoleum—a sepulchre fashioned after ordinary architectural canons, but of an architectonic ideal, symbolical of her womanly grace and beauty. Those critics who have objected to the effeminacy of the architecture unconsciously pay the highest tribute to the genius of the builders. ”

“ So plainly I could see, beyond the massive archway and across a score of years, all that they saw at that moment—Arjamand’s garden, and the long straight tank of marble cleaving it full of sleeping water and the shadows of the marshaling cypresses; her wide dark garden of roses and of pomegranates, and at the end the Vision, marvellous, aerial, the soul of something—is it beauty? is it sorrow?—that great white pride of love in mourning such as only here in all the round of our little world lifts itself to the stars, the unpaintable, indescribable Taj Mahal. ”

“ In compliance with this request, and as a token of his unceasing love for the deceased queen, the Emperor constructed on her grave the famous Taj Mahal—a monument which by its beauty has made immortal the love it commemorates. The most beautiful building in the world stands as a memorial to man’s love for his wife—an unconquerable love, unbroken and unsatisfied. ”

“ The mausoleum itself, while it cannot pretend to the delicate, ever-varying beauty of the tomb of Taj Mahal, at Agra, is yet no mean receptacle for the bones of a king, whose life was rather spent in war than in peace. ”

“ And my name is Abul Qasim.
But of all that garden of flowers, the Begams and Princesses, there was one whom my soul loved as a father loves his child, for she resembled that loveliest of all sweet ladies, her father’s mother, she who lies buried by Jumna River in the divine white beauty of the Taj Mahal. (May it be sanctified to her rest!) ”

“ 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? ”

“ I think of the garden and palace of Delhi Fort as the loveliest spot in India. Not the most beautiful, not the most impressive; but the loveliest. The Taj Mahal has a greater beauty; the ruined city of Fatehpur-Sikri has a greater dignity; but for the perfection of domestic regality in design and material and workmanship, this marble home and mosque and accompanying garden and terrace could not be excelled. After the Halls of Audience we come to the seraglio and accompanying buildings, where everything is perfect and nothing is on the grand scale. The Pearl Mosque could hardly be smaller ”

“ Every age, and every nation, has left to us some crowning achievements of the builder's art. The following are therefore merely selections from this storehouse, illustrating to some degree the wealth of architectural treasures that is our heritage.
Few if any buildings in the world have been the subject of such praise as that bestowed upon the Taj Mahal ("Gem of Buildings") . Travelers, [2] painters, authors, and poets have all sought to express in word or color the indefinable charm of this gem of Indian art. ”

“ Photography is one of the many triumphs of the human mind over time and space. Thousands of miles are between you and the wonderful Taj Mahal. You may never be able to go to it. But as the mountain would not go to Mohammed and Mohammed therefore went to the mountain, so photography brings the Taj Mahal to you. ”

“ At the end of the main terrace we reach the steps leading up to the great platform on which the Taj and its minarets, "four tall court ladies tending their Princess," are raised.
Let us reverently enter the central chamber, where Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, her lord and lover, lie. Fergusson has truly said, no words can express its chastened beauty seen in the soft gloom of the subdued light coming from the distant and half-closed openings. The screen of marble tracery which surrounds the tombs is in itself a masterpiece. ”

“ Over the arches of the arcade in this hall is a Persian inscription in raised and gilt characters, which reads, “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” This costly “paradise,” again, was built by the builder of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jehan, who seems to have outshone all the Mogul emperors by the splendour of his buildings. Of course there are no diamonds, or rubies, or emeralds left, and even the small stones used in the decorative floral inlays have in many cases been picked out. ”

“ The worship of ancestors has been the keystone of the religion of the races of the Far East, and throughout the Asiatic Continent the highest expression of the genius and art of her children is to be found in monuments raised to the memory of her illustrious dead—the Taj Mahal at Agra, the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, the beautiful mausolea of the Shoguns at Tokyo and Nikko. ”

“ Above the second story rises something half-cupola, half-dome, but it is not in the middle; there are smaller cupolas at the side overlooking the causeway, and others smaller still at the far side. The whole temple is smaller than St. Clement Danes, and a little building has no right to be irregular. If the Taj Mahal, you say, which is three times this size, can take the trouble to be symmetrical—well, if this is the masterpiece of modern India—as for the gold, it blinds you for the first moment and amuses you for the second ”

“ SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY [14] By FANNIE HURST (From The Cosmopolitan)
By that same mausolean instinct that was Artimesia's when she mourned her dear departed in marble and hieroglyphics; by that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agra to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, so the Bon Ton Hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly complete, reared its fourteen stories of "Elegantly furnished suites, all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home." ”

“ Taj Mahal still lives and enjoys a pension of six thousand rupees a-month, under the guarantee of the British Government. She became very profligate after the King's death; and after she had given birth to one child, it was deemed necessary to place a guard over her to prevent her dishonouring the memory of the King, her husband, any further by giving birth to more."
Of Miss Walters, alias Mokuddera Ouleea, the same lady writes:—"The other newly-made Queen is nearly European, but not a whit fairer than Taj Mahal. She is, in my opinion, plain ”

“ It has often been described in detail, but it is always new and always different, and it fascinates its witnesses. There is a repulsiveness about it which few people can overcome, but it is unique, and second only to the Taj Mahal of all the sights in India.
A bathing ghat is a pavilion, pier or platform of stone covered with awnings and roofs to protect the pilgrims from the sun. ”

“ After the marble inlay of the Taj Mahal and the Diwan-ud-Daulat, and Sikandra, or the rich arabesques of the Zenana rooms at Amber, the193 white and yellow wash and the rather coarse plaster work of the palaces and pavilions of Lucknow look, comparatively speaking, cheap. The stuccoed domes of the mosques miss the splendour of the gold and ivory-like marble seen elsewhere. Even the Jama Musjid, fine in scale as it is, lacks the charm of colour. ”

“ Several of the ruins were of interest, and they had a history, but I will describe only the well-preserved mausoleum of Emperor Humayun, which gains in importance from having been the model of the Taj Mahal at Agra. It stands on a lofty platform of red sandstone, and consists of a large central octagon, surmounted by a dome with octagon towers at the angles; the red sandstone exterior is artistically picked out in relief with white marble. ”

“ His works have made Agra, of all cities in India, the place of unrivaled interest.
THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA
Agra's Taj Mahal is the most exquisite building [171] ever erected by the hands of man, and is a romance as deftly wrought in marble as any writer ever fashioned in words. It marks a great man's love for a woman—Arjamand Banu Begum, his wife. Shah Jahan was a Mohammedan despot who led a magnificent life, and had other wives ”