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Chap. XIII. Another peculiarity of Indian architecture is worth pointing out here as tending to modify one of the most generally received dogmas of Western criticism. In speaking of such monuments as New Grange or the tombs at Locmariaker, which are rooted by overlapping stones forming what is technically called a horizontal arch, it is usual to assume that this must have been done before the invention of the Roman or radiating arch form. So far as Indian experience goes, this assumption is by no means borne out. When Kutb u deen wished to signalise his triumph over the idolaters, he, in 1206 A.D., employed the Hindus to erect a mosque for him in his recently acquired capital of Delhi. In the centre of the screen forming the mosque, he designed a great archway 22 feet span, 53 feet in height, and formed as a pointed arch of two sides of an equilateral spherical triangle. This was the usual form of Saracenic openings at Ghazni or Balkh in the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it was almost beyond the power of the Hindus to construct it. They did so, however, and it still stands, though crippled; but all the courses are horizontal, like their own domes, except two long stones which form the apex of the arch. In a very few years after this time the Mahommedan conquerors had taught the subject Hindus to build radiating arches, and every mosque or Mahommedan building from that time forward is built with arches formed as we form them; but, except a very few in the reign of the cosmopolite Akbar, no single Hindu building or temple, even down to the present time, has an arch in the sense in which we understand the word.

One of the most striking instances of this peculiarity is found in the province of Guzerat. There are still to be seen the splendid ruins of the city of Ahmedabad built by the Mahommedan kings of the province between the years 1411 and 1583. There every mosque and every building is arched or vaulted according to one system. In the same province stands the sacred city of Palitana, with its hundreds of temples, some of a date as early as the eleventh, many built within the limits of the present century, and some now in the course of construction; yet, so far as