Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/78

 habitually as unconscious of the progress of national sentiment, as a man is of his own growth in stature. The development now actually in progress is no artificial novelty, for the importation of which a definite date can be assigned. It is rather the necessary result of an involuntary adaptation to the varying circumstances of modern life, and is the more unfelt because the laws so ceaselessly modified are oral and traditional, not written.

It is true that the Hindu Shastras include a series of treatises, which are professedly devoted to architecture and the other fine or mechanical arts; but manuscripts are exceedingly scarce, the text is often hopelessly corrupt, and the instructions are almost exclusively of a ritual character, concerning the selection of auspicious sites and days, and the proper location of images and altars. Hence it comes about that the only recognized standard of design is local custom, dating backwards it may be from immemorial antiquity, and thus fixed in principle, though ever varying in form with the variations of fashion and the requirements of modern civilization.

Beyond the buildings themselves, there is no record in existence of the new rules of proportion, and the foreign canons of taste, which were the necessary sequence of the Muhammadan invasion and the introduction of the arch. At Ahmadabad, in the Bombay Presidency, and at Jaunpur, in the North-West, the struggle between the old style and the new led to a singularly picturesque combination, which—despite the distance between the two cities and the absence of intercourse—in both places presents very similar features. The influences at work were precisely the same. A Muhammadan Court, at once bigoted and magnificent, was ambitious to embellish its capital and display its devotion, but was unable to carry out its ideas, except by the exclusive employment of Hindu craftsmen, of alien religion and opposite sympathies. The results, though highly interesting, are marred by the intrinsic incongruity of the component parts. This was soon felt to be a defect and was gradually toned down; but with its disappearance disappeared also the whole charm of the style, which was never more than a beautiful hybrid, doomed to early decay and with no power of reproduction.

The eclecticism of Akbar's reign was less forced in its origin, and has been more permanent in its effects, for they continue to the present