Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/236

 i 9 4 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. the place where they were found. 1 If any other parts of the tomb are ornamented in the same style, it would be of great interest to have them drawn. It probably is, however, from the Jami' Masjid that we shall obtain the best picture of the arts of that day, when any one will take the trouble of examining it. Two minars still adorn the plain outside the city, and form, if not the most striking, at least the most prominent of the ruins of that city. Neither of them was ever attached to a mosque ; they are, indeed, pillars of victory, or Jaya Stambhas, like those at Chitor and elsewhere in India, and are such as we might expect to find in a country so long Buddhist. One of them was erected by Mahmud himself; the other was built, or at least finished, by Mas'ud, one of his immediate successors. 2 The lower part of these towers is of a star-like form the plan being apparently formed by placing two squares diagonally the one over the other. The upper part, rising to the height of about 140 ft. from the ground, is circular; both are of brickwork, covered with ornaments of terra-cotta of extreme elaboration and beauty, and retaining their sharp- ness to the present day. Several other minars of the same class are found further west, even as far as the roots of the Caucasus, 3 which, like these, were pillars of victory, erected by the conquerors on their battle-fields. None of them have the same architectural merit as those of Ghazni, at least in their present state, though it may be that their ornaments, having been in stucco or some perishable material, have disappeared, leaving us now only the skeleton of what they were. The weakness of Mahmud's successors left the Indians in repose for more than a century and a half; and, like all Eastern dynasties, the Ghaznavides were gradually sinking to inevitable decay, when their fall was precipitated by the crimes of one of them, which were fearfully avenged by the destruction of their empire and capital by 'Alau-d-Din Hasan, and their race was at length superseded by that of the Ghuri, in the person of Shihabu-d-Din Muhammad ibn Sam, in the year 1186. Though centuries of misrule have weighed on this country since the time of the Ghaznavides, it is scarcely probable that all traces of their magnificence have passed away ; but till their 1 An excellent representation of these gates will be found in the second edition of ' Marco Polo's Travels,' by Col. Yule, vol. ii. p. 390. 2 See translation of the inscription on these minars, 'Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. xii. (1843), pp. 77, 78. 8 Two are represented by Dubois de Montpereux, 'Voyage autour du Caucase,'