Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/374

 322 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. residing at Aurangabad between the years 1660-70 having lost his favourite wife, 1 Rabia Daurani, the tomb in honour of her memory which is ascribed to her third son A'zam Shah was intended, it is said, to reproduce an exact copy of Shah Jahan's celebrated tomb, the Taj Mahall. But the difference between the two monuments, even in so short an interval, is startling. The first stands alone in the world for certain qualities all can appreciate ; the second is by no means remarkable for any qualities of elegance or design, and narrowly escapes vulgarity and bad taste. In the beginning of the nineteenth century a more literal copy of the Taj was erected in Lucknow over the tomb of one of its sovereigns. In this last, however, bad taste and tawdriness reign supreme. It is difficult to understand how a thing can be so like in form and so unlike in spirit ; but so it is, and these three Tajes form a very perfect scale by which to measure the decline of art after the great Mughal dynasty passed its zenith and began its rapid downward career. Aurangzib himself lies buried in the court of the tomb of Shaikh Zainu-d-Dm, at Khuldabad, a small hamlet just above the caves of Elura. The spot is esteemed sacred, but the tomb is mean and insignificant beyond what would have sufficed for any of his nobles. He neglected, apparently, to provide for himself this necessary adjunct to a Tartar's glory, and his successors were too weak, even had they been inclined, to supply the omission. Strange to say, the sacred Tulsi-tree of the Hindus once took root in a crevice of the brickwork, and flourished there as if in derision of the most bigoted persecutor the Hindus ever experienced. As before observed, Aurangzib also made a few additions to the palace at Delhi ; but during his reign many splendid palaces were erected, both in the capital and elsewhere. The most extensive and splendid of these was that built by his aspiring but unfortunate brother Dara Shikoh. It, however, was con- verted into the English residency ; and so completely have improvements, with plaster and whitewash, done their work, that it requires some ingenuity to find out that it was not wholly the work of the Anglo-Saxons. In the town of Delhi many palaces of the age of Aurangzib long escaped this profanation, but generally they are either in ruins or used as shops ; and with all their splendour show too clearly the degradation of style which had then fairly set in, and which is even more apparent in the modern capitals of 1 Aurangzib married Dilras Band Begam, a daughter of Shahnawaz Khan Safawi, in 1637, who bore to him five sons and four daughters.