Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/382

 3*8 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. the one hand, and his knowledge of what is suited to his wants and his climate on the other, he makes a sad jumble of the Orders. But fashion supplies the Indian with those incentives to copying which we derive from association and education ; and, in the vain attempt to imitate his superiors, he has abandoned his own beautiful art to produce the strange jumble of vulgarity and bad taste we find at Lucknow and elsewhere. The great caravansarais which the Calcutta Babus and the native Rajas have erected for their residences in Lower Bengal are generally in this style, but with an additional taint of vulgarity. But perhaps the most striking example of it all is a pavilion which was erected within the palace at Delhi by the last king. It stood behind, and was seen above, the great audience hall of Shah Jahan, in which once stood the celebrated peacock throne, and is one of the noblest and most beautiful apartments of its class in any palace in the world. Over this, on entering the palace, you saw a little pavilion of brick and plaster, which its builder assumed to be the Doric Order, with Italian windows and Venetian blinds. The building was painted green, the frieze red, and the ornaments yellow ! the whole in worse taste than the summer-house of a Dutch skipper, as seen overhanging a canal in Holland. Contrasted with the simplicity and elegance of the white marble palace beneath, it told, in a language not to be mistaken, how deeply fallen and how contemptible were the late occupants of the throne, as compared with their great ancestors of the house of Timur, who ruled that mighty empire, and adorned its cities with those faultless edifices described in the previous part of this work. 1 Even at Lucknow, however, there are some buildings into which the European leaven has not penetrated, and which are worthy of being mentioned in the same volume as the works of their ancestors. Among these is the great Imambara, 2 which, though its details will not bear too close an examination, is still conceived on so grand a scale as to entitle it to rank with the buildings of an earlier age. It was built by Asafu-d-daula, the fourth Nawab, as a relief work during the famine of 1784. As seen by the plan of the Imambara (Woodcut No. 440), the principal apartment is 162 ft. long by 53 ft. 6 in. wide. On the two sides are verandahs, respectively 26 ft. 6 in. and 27 ft. 3 in. wide, and at each end an octagonal apartment, 53 ft. in diameter, the whole interior dimensions being thus 263 ft. by 1 ' History of the Modern Styles of Architecture,' 3rd ed., vol. ii. pp. 3Oif. 2 Or Imambari, a building in which the Moharram festival is celebrated and commemorative services of the deaths of 'Ali and his sons Hasan and Husain are held ; and their Ta'zias or shrines are preserved in it. Under this Imambara its founder was buried. It now serves as an arsenal for the British garrison.