Page:The Architecture of Ancient Delhi Especially the Buildings Around the Kutb Minar 1872 by Henry Hardy Cole.djvu/42

 24 Ancient Cities of Delhi. interior is paved with white marble, and the exterior of the building is flanked by two minarets, 130 feet high, of white marble and red sandstone. Detail paintings of the mosaics, as well as coloured miniatures on ivory of the throne in the Diwan-i-am, of the interior of the Diwan-i-khass and of the mosque built by Shah Jahan, are exhibited in the South Kensington Museum. Shah Jahan was the emperor who built the celebrated and beautiful Taj Mahal at Agra, in memory of Munitaz Mahal his queen. At Delhi, in 1863, some remarkable fragments of a large Muhammadan sculptured elephant and human figure were found and collected by Mr. C. Campbell, the executive engineer, who pieced them together and erected them in the public gardens, where they may be seen at the present time. Bernier, who visited Delhi at the commencement of the Emperor AurangziVs reign, describes two such sculptures as having existed at either side of one of the gateways leading into the palace. " On one of the elephants," says he, " is seated the statue of Jai Mai, the renowned Raja of Chittur, and on the other is the statue of his brother." These sculptures were very exceptional works for Muhammadan artists to have undertaken, and were most probably made at the instance of the Emperor Akbar, who besieged Chittore and killed Jai Mai on that occasion. It is said that he caused the statues at Delhi to be erected to evince a sense of the merits of his foes ; Aurangzib however, in a religious frenzy, stimulated by a deference to the hatred held by Mussulmans of images of all kinds, ordered them to be pulled down and broken up. The construction of the life-sized elephant consists of several pieces of black stone, with housings in white and yellow marble, and the figure which rode on it was of red sandstone.