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112 influenced the Muhammadan buildings of Northern India from the end of the twelfth to the middle of the sixteenth centuries, is only entitled to the name from the fact that some of the Sultans were Turks and others Pathāns. Mahmūd of Ghaznī may be said to have laid the foundations of the school by bringing Indian and Persian builders to Ghaznī, some by compulsion and others by persuasion, for several of the Rajput fighting clans joined the armies which he led to the loot of the cities of Hindustan. The characteristics of these so-called Pathān buildings are, as might be expected, a blend of Indian and Persian traditions adapted to the strict Sunni ritual, as dictated by the Ulamās of the Delhi court. The severity of their style must be attributed to the puritanical sentiment of the Sunni interpreters of Islamic law, and not to the racial temperament of the Pathān or Turkish fighting men or of their leaders. The external curve of the "Pathān" dome is the exact outline which the masonry dome of the Hindu temple mandapam of the period would assume if all its external sculpture were chipped off. As the masons were practical builders, they naturally adapted the structure of the dome to the new conditions. The dome is invariably crowned by the Buddhist and Hindu symbol, the Amalaka, or blue-lotus fruit, which probably passed the censorship of the Ulamā because its connection with the worship of Vishnu was not understood. The use of recessed arches was a suggestion from Persian Musalman buildings adapted, as before stated, from the niched shrines of Buddhist saints. The forms of the arches themselves, in all "Indo-Saracenic" styles, were invariably taken from the ritual of the Indian image-maker.

There is a finer feeling for proportion and