Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/340

 2 9 o INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. wife lies beside him ; but more generally his family and relations are buried beneath the collateral domes. When once used as a place of burial, its vaults never again resound with festive mirth. The care of the building is handed over to priests and faqirs, who gain a scanty subsistence by the sale of the fruits of the garden, or the alms of those who come to visit the last resting-place of their friend or master. Perfect silence takes the place of festivity and mirth. The beauty of the surrounding objects combines with the repose of the place to produce an effect as graceful as it is solemn and appropriate. Though the' tombs, with the remains of their enclosures, are so numerous throughout all India, the Taj Mahall, at Agra, is almost the only tomb that retains its garden in anything like its pristine beauty, and there is not perhaps in the whole world a scene where nature and art so successfully combine to produce a perfect work of art as within the precincts of this far-famed mausoleum. The tomb of Humayun Shah, the first of the Mughals who was buried in India, still stands tolerably entire among the ruins of Old Delhi, of which indeed it forms the principal and most striking object (Plate XXXIII.). It stands well on a large square platform, 22 ft. in height, adorned with arches, whose piers are ornamented with an inlay of white marble. The tomb itself is an octagonal apartment, 47 ft. 4 in. across, crowned by a dome of white marble, of very graceful contour externally. Four sides of the octagon are occupied by the entrances ; the other four smaller octagonal apartments, 23 ft. wide, are attached ; these project from the faades of the central bays on each face, and the amount of white marble on them, gives them prominence. In the corner rooms are the tombs of Haji Begam and some nine others of the royal race. These apartments make up a building nearly square in plan, about 155 ft. each way, with the angles slightly cut away. 1 Its plan is in fact that after- wards adopted at the Taj (Woodcut No. 433), but used here without the depth and poetry of that celebrated building. Its most marked characteristic, however, is its purity it might almost be called poverty of design. It is so very unlike any- thing else that Akbar ever built, that it is hardly possible it could have been designed by him. It has not even the picturesque boldness of the earlier Pathan tombs, and in fact looks more like buildings a century at least more modern than it really is. It is, however, as will be seen, from the photograph, a noble tomb, and anywhere else must be considered a wonder. 1 In the upper storey of the building round the drum supporting the dome, are rooms and pavilions once occupied by a college, long since deserted.