Ashram

“ The Ashram merely loses interest on the loan advanced for the yarn. It has as yet suffered no loss and is able to restrict its loss to a minimum by limiting the loan to a particular figure. All future transactions are strictly cash. We are able to command a ready sale for the cloth received. The loss of interest, therefore, on the transaction is negligible. I would like the audience to note its purely moral character from start to finish. The Ashram depends for its existence on such help as friends render it. We, therefore, can have no warrant for charging interest. ”

“ We might be sure that the Buddhist bhikkus were not the first to fix their ashrams here. The history of Buddhist art for nine hundred years is told in the twenty-six chapels and college halls ranged along the cliff. ”

“ We do not want nowadays temples of worship and outward rites and ceremonies. What we really want is an Asram. We want a place where the beauty of nature and the noblest pursuits of man are in a sweet harmony. Our temple of worship is there where outward nature and human soul meet in union." Recognising the influence of environment upon temperament, the ancient teachers chose the forest shades or the banks of holy rivers as the sites for their Asrams. When we are filled with the sense of the divinity that surrounds us, then we feel impelled to give ourselves up to reverie or meditation on God. ”

“ But the Mosque — that blossom of Oriental architecture, with its crowning domes, like the inverted bells of the lotus, and its reed-like minarets, its fountains and marble courts — can only perish with the faith it typifies. I, for one, rejoice that, so long as the religion of Islam exists (and yet, may its time be short!) , no Christian model can shape its houses of worship. The minaret must still lift its airy tower for the muezzin; the dome must rise like a gilded heaven above the prayers of the Faithful, with its starry lamps and emblazoned phrases ”

“ At last far away, where the road dipped and turned, stood the longed-for clump of trees, clustered round the great caravanserai and the glittering blue-tiled dome of the little mosque. This was not an ordinary post-house, but a stately pile, four-square, built by some pious person in the reign of Shah Abbas, and the mosque was the shrine and tomb of a saint, a descendant of the Prophet. Behind it lay a huge mound of earth, a solid watch-tower heaped up in turbulent times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a great building of red sandstone and marble, "upstanding from a platform reached on three sides by flights of steps so tall, so majestically wide, that they are like a stone mountain." At the head of each flight is a splendid gateway, and that which faces eastward is opened for none save the Viceroy, who rules India, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. At the mosque are preserved some Moslem relics, which the guardian priest will show for a fee—a slipper of Mohammed, a hair of the Prophet, his footprints in stone, and a piece of the green canopy which was once over his tomb. ”

“ There is a subtle rhythm in the placing of the three domes over the seven arches of the mosque, which saves the whole design from monotony, while the marvellous grace of the contours, which is so characteristic of the finest of Shah Jahan's buildings, makes each dome grow up from the roof like a flower-bud on the point of unfolding. The octagonal pavilions at the four corners of the mosque, and the dainty little kiosques placed as decoration over the arches and over the gateways of the courtyard, echo the harmonies of the larger constructive details, and give completeness to the composition. ”

“ I shall build a temple, not to Osiris or Isis, but to the One God in whom all believe: the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians, and the Jews. I wish that temple to be like the palace of King Assar, the model of which Sargon brought to my father."
"Those are great plans," said the high priest, shaking his head, "but it is impossible to execute them. The Babylonian towers are not lasting because of their form, they overturn easily, while our edifices must endure for ages. A temple to the One God we may not raise, for he needs no food, drink, or raiment. ”

“ Four miles round it there is nothing to be seen but gigantic ruins of mosques and palaces, and the actual living city has the finest mosque we have seen yet. It is in such perfect preservation, built entirely of red stone and white marble, with immense flights of marble steps leading up to three sides of it; these, the day we went to it, were entirely covered with people dressed in very bright colours—Sikhs, and Mahrattas, and some of the fair Mogul race, all assembled to see the Governor-General’s suwarree, and I do not think I ever saw so striking a scene. ”

“ The gem of the architectural exhibition at Agra, always exempting the Taj Mahal, is the "Pearl Mosque," so called because it is built of stainless white marble, without the slightest bit of color within except inscriptions from the Koran here and there inlaid in precious stones. It was the private chapel of the Moguls, as you might say; was built between 1648 and 1655, and has been pronounced by the highest authority to be the purest and most elegant example of Saracenic architecture in existence. No lovelier sanctuary was ever erected in honor of the Creator. ”

“ This mosque is always illuminated by flashes of light; and before the window of the mihráb there is a garden like that of Irem, adorned with various fruits and flowers, where, beneath a monument of white marble, covered with lead, rest the remains of its founder. Round the inner and outer courts of this mosque there are shops of all kinds of trades, with a public kitchen, a refectory, and hostel for travellers; a school for instructing the poor and rich in the Korán; and a college for lectures on the art of reciting it. ”

“ Opposite, on the hill, is the mosque, and the plastered dome of the sheykh’s tomb, with its prayer-niche, a quiet and commanding place of repose. The mosque looks down upon the ever-flowing Nile, upon the granite desolation, upon the decaying temple of Isis,—converted once into a temple of the true God, and now merely the marvel of the traveler. The mosque itself, representative of the latest religion, is falling to ruin. ”

“ But for our frankolins and starlings we should have gone fasting.
The mosque was a beautiful structure of white limestone, and the galleries of its minarets were adorned with rich arabesque ornaments. While the muezzin was crying his sunset-call to prayer, I entered the portico and looked into the interior, which was so bare as to appear incomplete. As we sat in our palace-court, after dinner, the moon arose, lighting up the niches in the walls, the clusters of windows in the immense eastern gable, and the rows of massive columns. ”

“ A prince in whose reign and under whose direct superintendence was fostered the style of architecture which produced that little Mouti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) which we saw a moment ago—not to speak of the Jammah Masjid of Delhi which we saw there, or of the Taj which we are now going to see—must have been a spacious-souled man, with frank and pure elevations of temper within him, like that exquisite white marble superstructure of the Mouti Masjid which rises from a terrace of rose, as if the glow of crude passion had thus lifted itself into the pure white of tried virtue. ”

“ The fine workmanship is worthy of the art.
On either side of the mosque there is a small chamber for the ladies of the zanana, with a window filled with a carved marble grille looking on to the interior. They could thus attend to the services of the mosque without being seen. The staircases on the right and left of the courtyard give private access to the apartments of the palace.
The Persian inscription inlaid in black marble under the wide, projecting cornice of the mosque is a poetic tribute to the beauty of the building and a panegyric of its founder. ”

“ A huge yellow monster sits propped against the wall, the thankoffering of a paralytic cured by bathing in the Ganges. Numberless Hindu temples, known always by the tower of crenelated smaller towers tapering to the largest and crowning one, are seen behind and in between the palaces. They are found in every part and corner of the sacred city. Above all is always seen the landmark formed by the slender minars of the Great Mosque. ”

“ To enter the Golden Temple is not permitted to Europeans—only to peep through a hole in the wall and also to look at the roofs from the upper balcony of an adjacent house. There are two tall conical roofs shaped—as in so many Hindoo temples—like a common type of mould for ice puddings and a lower dome between them ridged like a melon, and beyond rises the white Mohammedan mosque. ”

“ But the wonderful eye for colour, and the inborn taste of architecture that belongs to every Indian, makes them marvellously picturesque and interesting. There are the carved gateways, which generally lead into the chowk, or narrow street, where no carriage can enter; the curiously wrought overhanging balconies with scarlet striped blinds, from behind which peep out dark-eyed nautch girls. There is the minaret of a mosque in one corner, and the carved remains of a Hindu temple in the other. Here a group of men and women squatting over a hole in the earth, where they are pounding millet ”

“ In the big mosque in the centre of the town the builders seem to have recognised that the beauty of curving roofs and the splendour of coloured tiles could go no further—they have called in Heaven to their aid. The entrance, indeed, is vaulted over, the floor is strewn with carpets, and the walls glow with colour; but the central court is open to the sky, and a fountain plashes under the blaze of light and sunshine which falls through the opening. Round the edge of the basin beggars sit washing their feet, grave elders dip their hands and bathe their faces in the cool water ”

“ 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 entrance to the Mûti Masjid is very plain and unpretending, so that one is hardly prepared for the beauty, purity, and the unaffected expression of an exalted religious feeling which characterize the interior. It is rare to find an Indian building in which the effect is produced with hardly any ornament, but solely by the perfection of proportions, beauty of material, and harmony of constructive design. The courtyard, in front of the mosque, with its arcades and gateways, is a noble setting to the Pearl, as the mosque is appropriately called. ”

“ A spacious mosque of azure blue rears a loftier dome and minarets close to the tomb, and was built by Gohur Shah, a descendant of the illustrious Timour. The pilgrim who visits this [82] shrine must first travel the bazar and cross the chain, when he enters a sanctuary, which no crime admits of being violated. He then proceeds under a lofty archway, and finds himself within a spacious quadrangle, the work of the great Abbas, which is a resting-place for the living and the dead. ”

“ The mosque is far and away the finest mosque, the palace far and away the finest palace; and, except Madura, they stand together first in the universe. The palace is full of intense interest, for it was here that the great events of the last three hundred years happened, and in modern times that the last Emperor of Delhi, after the retaking of the city by the English, was tried ignominiously for murder. ”

“ Here and there among the pillars are seated learned men or pundits, who place offerings of flowers and perfumed water before their sacred books and chant the meaning of Sanskrit scriptures to groups of devout listeners.
The great temple, with its dimly lighted corridors, is open to the public day and night, and there is special illumination by hundreds of little lamps in an arch at the entrance when night comes on. Long avenues are filled with buyers and sellers of wares, and the rent of their stalls furnishes a large revenue for the support of the many priests. ”

“ Against the clear sky is outlined a succession of domes and spires that mark the position of a score of sacred shrines, with two slender minarets that rise from the mosque built by the great Moslem Emperor, Aurunzeb. The sunlight flashes on these domes and spires and it lights up thousands of bathing floats and stands that line the muddy banks of the river. The floats are dotted with hundreds of bathers and the number of these increases every few minutes. ”

“ In this, the sublimest scene of Arabian glory, Israel and Ishmael alike raised their altars to the great God of Abraham.
Why are they in ruins? Is it that human structures are not to be endured amid the awful temples of nature and revelation; and that the column and the cupola crumble into nothingness in sight of the hallowed Horeb and on the soil of the eternal Sinai?
Ascending the mountain, about half way between the convent and the utmost height of the towering peak, is a small plain surrounded by rocks. In its centre are a cypress tree and a fountain. ”