The Taj Mahal (‘Crown of the Palace’), the mausoleum built in 1632-1653 by Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) for his second and favourite wife, Arjumand Banu Begum (1593-1631), known as Mumtaz Mahal or ‘Exalted One of the Palace’. Shah Jahan (1592-1666) was also buried here. Craik set the Taj in historical context for English readers, mentioning the English Civil War (1642-1651), the reign of Charles II (1649-1685) and the Great Fire of London (1666) which destroyed old St Paul’s Cathedral — new St Paul’s was built in 1675-1710. Craik found India’s civilisation unexpectedly modern. “Throughout the scenes amongst which I have passed,” he wrote, “one hardly ever recalls history more distant than the days of Milton.”
Part 1 of 2
SLOWLY the miracle of Agra, the Taj, opens on our view — at first a white dome, encircled by dazzling minarets, and then slowly showing its surroundings of portal and mosque, contrasting with its snowy brilliancy and simplicity in their deep warm red, and in the fantastic and rich ornamentation of their facades and parapets. The Taj rises above them, vast and majestic, in its perfect simplicity of outline, solid, and yet seeming at times almost to melt into cloud and sky. We pass through two courtyards of red stone, bordered with serais,* and on through its richly decorated portal of red, chequered with variegated marbles, into the long peaceful garden with its rows of Italian cypresses, its trim flower beds,* its marble paths, and its pools and fountains, at the far end of which rises, above marble staircase and platform, the vast mass of pure white outlining itself against the deep blue of the sky. All doubts, all fears of disappointed expectations, all feelings except that of over-mastering beauty, are swept away; and each step, as we come nearer to it, and it gradually dwarfs the foliage that lies below, confirms the magic of its unrivalled grace. By this alone, one is tempted to think, the voyage to India would be repaid. [...]
* By the end of the Mughal era, in the early nineteenth century, the condition of the gardens had declined; but in Victoria’s later years, the British relaid them, somewhat favouring the formal London fashions of the day.
* ‘Serai’ is a Turkish word (reflecting the influence of the Ottoman Empire on India) meaning a guesthouse.
Précis
On a trip to India in 1907, Sir Henry Craik called at Agra to see the Taj Mahal. He was nervous that after all he had heard, the monument might prove an anticlimax; but the cool white marble of the Taj, the warm red sandstone gateways, the formal gardens and the playing fountains quite took his breath away. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
Intricate decorations on the Taj Mahal, seen on a day of unsettled weather in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, about 100 miles south of New Delhi. Craik was spellbound by the beauty of the Taj. “That beauty sinks the deeper the longer we linger by it; it is increased by each visit; it is enhanced by every sight of it — in the hazy mists of the morning, in the blaze of the mid-day sun, when the evening shades are lengthening, and, more perhaps than all, in the cold silvery light of the moon under a sky of deepest blue.”
The story of Shah Jahan, with all his easy bonhomie, his laxity of creed, his life of mingled fighting and debauchery, blended with his passionate and enduring love for the wife of his youth, and the sadness of his closing years, must always have an interest of its own. But in this creation of surpassing beauty I can find nothing that reflects the sadness of human fate, or that tells of the all-pervading solemnity of death. There is nothing of sad or mournful reminiscence, nothing of the infinite regret for love that is only a memory. It tells of no grief for the immutable decrees of fate; it is a defiance of death by associating it with all the bright and gossamer gleam of sunlight and of fairy beauty. It stands supremely alone, not by the power of any pathos, or of any appeal to the sympathy which the woes of humanity evoke, but as the brightest, the most joyous, the most luxuriant monument of death and decay that the world has ever seen.
Précis
Craik reflected that although the Taj was a mausoleum for Shah Jahan’s wife, and that Shah Jahan was himself a troubled and conflicted man, the whole edifice seemed wholly without sadness, regret or poignancy; in all the world, there was no other monument to the dead so full of celebration and joy. (52 / 60 words)
