Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/438

 manner; I never saw any thing so elegant; the tombs, to be properly appreciated, must be seen, as all the native drawings make them exceedingly gaudy, which they are not. The inscriptions on both are of black marble inlaid on white, ornamented with mosaic flowers of precious stones.

The first glance on entering is imposing in the extreme: the dim religious light, the solemn echoes,—at first I imagined that priests in the chambers above were offering up prayers for the soul of the departed, and the echo was the murmur of the requiem. When many persons spoke together it was like thunder,—such a volume of powerful sounds; the natives compare it to the roar of many elephants. "Whatever you say to a dome it says to you again ." A prayer repeated over the tomb is echoed and re-echoed above like the peal of an organ, or the distant and solemn chant in a cathedral.

Each arch has a window, the frames of marble, with little panes of glass, about three inches square. Underneath the cenotaphs is a vaulted apartment, where the remains of the Emperor and the Sultana are buried in two sarcophagi, fac-*similes of the cenotaphs above. The crypt is square, and of plain marble; the tombs here are also beautifully inlaid, but sadly defaced in parts by plunderers. The small door by which you enter was formerly of solid silver: it is now formed of rough planks of mango wood.

It is customary with Musulmāns to erect the cenotaph in an apartment over the sarcophagus, as may be seen in all the tombs of their celebrated men. The Musulmāns who visit the Tāj lay offerings of money and flowers, both on the tombs below and the cenotaphs above; they also distribute money in charity, at the tomb, or at the gate, to the fakīrs.

The Sultana Arzumund Bānoo was the daughter of the vizier, Asaf-jāh; she was married twenty years to Shāhjahān, and bore him a child almost every year; she died on the 18th July, 1631, in childbed, about two hours after the birth of a princess. Though she seldom interfered in public affairs, Shāhjahān owed the empire to her influence with her father: nor was he