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, sheltering divinities of every shape and size, and whose decorations palpitated with the natural and floral forms so closely associated with the fundamental principles of the creed. This was the state of art in India before the Mohammedan invasion, and if it is possible to conceive the diametrical antithesis of this, the subsequent artistic condition of the country can be imagined. Not that the conquerors were blind to the æsthetic—a glance at the buildings of the Moguls at the present day will at once disprove this suggestion—but their art, as originally understood, was as far removed from that of the Hindus as the poles are asunder. For Mohammedanism brought with it all the leading convictions of that forceful cult which planted its indelible mark on the art and architecture of the world from Cordova to Canton. And in place of the unrestrained thought of the Hindu and his picturesque mythology, we have the stern conventions of Islam, and an art bound by the canons of a religion whose doctrine forbade representations of living objects, just as the early Christians abhorred the graven images