Percy Brown has remarked, "Konark (Temple) should be the wonder, not the Taj Mahal".

Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India (1890-1905) was the first British ruler to admire Indian civilization and to acknowledge that India’s architectural heritage constituted ‘the greatest galaxy monuments in the world’ As well as his contemporary, the first man to attempt an exposition of Indian art, was Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell.

Havell’s is not a name writ large in the annals of the British Raj. He came to India as principal to the Madras College of Art in the 1890s and left as principal of the Calcutta College of Art some 20 years later. But during this period his work and writings exercised considerable influence both in India and in the West.

Havell (1861-1934) insisted that the Islamic architecture in India was influenced by the Hindus. He supplied the following quotes from the opening quotes of his book, Indian Architecture - Its Psychology, Structure and History from the First Mohammedan Invasion to the Present Day. These give evidence at the admiration the Muslims had for Indian architecture: " Albiruni, the Arab historian, expressed his astonishment at and admiration for the work of Hindu builders. "Our people, he said, "when they see them, wonder at them and are unable to describe them, much less to construct anything like them."

Abdul Fazal (wrote), "It passes our conception of things, few indeed in the whole world can compare with them."

On page 321, Historian Vincent Smith in his book Akbar the Great Moghul, says:

" It is surprising to find unmistakable Hindu features in the architecture of the tomb of a most zealous Musalman saint, but the whole structure suggests Hindu feeling and nobody can mistake the Hindu origin of the column and struts of the porch."

(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 280-9).

Islamic architecture was one of rapid capitulation to the superior indigenous art of India. Akbar was not the exception but the classic example. His wholesale adoption of Hindu styles and his patronage of Indian craftsmen marked the end of a brief experiment with non-Indian forms (Tughlak’s tomb for example), and the beginning of one of the greatest periods of purely Indian building.

Taking the bull firmly by the horn Havell turned to the classic age of Moghul architecture, the reign of Shah Jehan (1628-58), and in particular to none other than the Taj Mahal. The great dome of subtle contour, the soaring minarets, the formal Persian garden, the chaste inlay work and tracery, the clustered cupolas – nothing, surely, could be more typically Mohammedan. But Havell was a determined polemicist and uniquely qualified scholar. His first point was that whatever the inspiration, ‘there is one thing which has struck every writer about the Taj Mahal and that is its dissimilarity to any other monument in any other part of the world..’

Outside India, its supposed precursor, Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, or the other two white marble tombs, those of Itimad-ud-Daula in Agra and Salim Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri, were so inferior as to be unworthy of comparison. There was no precedent in the strictly non-representational art of Islam. If the inspiration for the building was to be sought in sculpture rather than the architecture, then it must be sought in Indian sculpture. The purity of line and subtlety of contour which characterized it were precisely the qualities that distinguished the Mathura Buddhas or the Khajuraho apsaras.

There is also evidence that the building known as Humayun's Tomb is none other than a captured Lakshmi Temple. Abul Fazal says Humayun is buried in Sirhind. French writer G. Le Bon has published in his book The World of Ancient India (Publisher: Editions Minerva - Spain Date of Publication: 1974) a photo of marble footprints found in the building. He describes them as the footprints of Lord Vishnu. This is typical of a Vedic temple, to have the footprints of the main Divinity of the shrine. In this case, it is the husband of Lakshmi, Lord Vishnu.

And only an Hindu artist with his purely conceptual approach could have created a building that was so blatantly seductive.

It was a measure of the Taj’s uniqueness that some Englishmen suggested that its designer might have been one of the Europeans employed by Shah Jehan. It was just another example of foreigners trying to find a non-Indian inspiration for anything in Indian culture that took their fancy. James Todd had mentioned a Jain temple of the fifteenth century with something similar. Besides, the records showed that the inlay artists employed on the Taj were all Hindus.

The gardens, too, which add so much to the staging of the Taj, were the work of a Hindu, from Kashmir. Havell had studied the Silpa-sastras - the traditional manuals of the Hindu builder – and believed that even the bulbous dome conformed more closely to Indian ideals than those of Samarkhand. There was even a sculptural representation of such a dome in one of the Ajanta cave temples. Moreover, the internal roofing arrangement of four domes grouped round the fifth, central, dome conformed exactly to the panch-ratna, the ‘five jewel’ system so common to Indian buildings of all sorts.

All this was not enough to shake the traditional views, but Havell was not finished. In the 19th century, as now, people were inclined to concentrate too much on the buildings of Delhi and nearby Agra. For most, the style were the sum total of Islamic architecture, because they were inclined to concentrate too much on the buildings of Delhi and nearby Agra. Havell, was convinced that away from the political turmoil of north-west India, the architectural continuity before and after the Mohammedan conquest was unbroken; and that it was from these provincial centers that the ideals and craftsmen used by Shah Jehan had been drawn. In Gujarat, some of the mosques of the first Mohammedan dynasty are indistinguishable from temples; also in Gujarat, white marble had been used extensively by both Hindu and Jain.
At Bijapur the Mohammedans also inherited a local building tradition, for nearby lay the great Hindu capital of Vijayanagar. European accounts of Vijayanagar before its destruction only hint at its architectural wonders, but certainly the dome and the pointed arch were in general use. It was no coincidence that the great building period in Mohammedan Bijapur began immediately after the fall of Vijayanagar. Encouraged to concentrate on the dome, the erstwhile Hindu architects produced first the Bijapur Jama Masjid and then the giant Gol Gumbaz with one of the largest domes in the world.

According to Havell, it was on the skills of these master dome builders that Shah Jehan drew for the Taj Mahal.

The Rajput palaces, are arguably the most impressive and certainly the most romantic group of buildings in India. For, as Havell rightly observed, there could be no argument that in secular architecture the styles of Hindu and Mohammedan, of Rajput and Moghul, were one and the same. Moreover, the origins of this style were wholly Indian.

Witness the great fifteenth-century Man Singh palace in the Gwalior fort.

‘One of the finest specimen of Hindu architecture that I have seen…the noblest specimen of Hindu domestic architecture in northern India.” Noted General Sir Alexander Cunningham. Babur, the first of the Moghuls, evidently agreed. His official diary shows that he admired and coveted this building above all others in India. In due course it became the inspiration for all the palaces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for the Moghul forts of Delhi and Agra as well as for the Rajput forts of Orchha, Amber and Jodhpur.

“ If our poets had sung them (wrote Havell of the Rajput palaces), our painters pictured them, our heroes and famous men had lived in them, their romantic beauty would be on every man’s lips in Europe. Libraries of architectural treatises would have been written on them.”

Bishop Heber had been equally impressed when he toured the palace of Amber a century earlier.

“ I have seen many royal palaces containing larger and more stately rooms – many the architecture of which was in purer taste, and some which have covered a greater extent of ground – but for varied and picturesque effect, for richness of carving, for wild beauty of situation, for the number and romantic singularity of the apartments, and the strangeness of finding such a building in such a place, I am unable to compare anything with Amber….The idea of an enchanted castle occurred, I believe, to all of us, and I could not help thinking what magnificent use Ariosto or Sir Walter Scott would have made such a building. “

James Ferguson, historian of India’s architecture, was not blind to the romantic appeal of the Rajput palaces. He praised their settings and lack of affectation.

Havell noted the way these buildings seemed to grow organically out of the rocks on which they stood ‘ without self-conscious striving after effect.’ Thus, above all, their romantic appeal; but there is also a grandeur and an elegance of detail beside which the Moghul palaces pale into mere prettiness. Here was Hindu architecture both more virile and more noble than its Islamic equivalent.

Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, thought the palaces of Datia one of the most architecturally interesting buildings in India. It is also one of the most impressive. Conceived as a single unit, unlike the Moghul palaces, it towers above the little town of Datia like the work of an extinct race of giants. Each side is about 100 yards long rises from the bare rock so subtly that it is hard to tell where nature’s work ends and man’s begins. The impression is of immense strength, and only the skyline of flattened domes and cupolas gives any hint of the treasures within. Datia was built by Rajah Bir Singh Deo in the seventeenth century. The palaces of Orchha were also his work, and here there are more painted halls and dappled pavilions as well as some of the finest carved brackets. Today hardly anyone visits these masterpieces. It is a setting one of ruination – miles of crumbling stables, overgrown gardens and forgotten temples. Forlorn masterpieces indeed.....

(source: India Discovered - By John Keay 1981. chapter 9. pg- 111-130)

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

 

Taj Mahal, a Hindu Temple?

E. B. Havell,(1861-1934) the English architect, principal to the Madras College of Art in the 1890s and left as principal of the Calcutta College of Art some 20 years later), has all along stressed that the Taj is entirely a Hindu structure in design and execution. Within its three floors - basement, ground and first floors - the marble structure has a nearly 25 room palace suite. The four towers used to sport multi-colored lights. The Taj precincts are a huge building complex encompassing over three hundred rooms.

Many believe that the Taj Mahal was a 12th century temple-palace seized from Raja Jaisingh of Jaipur and converted to accommodate Mumtaz's tomb. Mullah Abdul Hamid Lahori, Shah Jehan's own official chronicler, has written, that Mumtaz's body was laid to rest in a "lofty sky-high palace with a majestic dome" procured from Raja Jaisingh.

The journals of Tamerlane (1336-1405) and Babur (1483-1530) show that this palace pre-dates Shah Jehan and also points to the notable absence of any claim by Shah Jehan himself for its construction.

A passage from Shahjahan’s court chronicle, the Badshahnama, which despairingly admits that the Taj Mahal is a commandeered Hindu palace. Mansingh’s mansion (manzil) was then in the possession of his grandson Jaisingh – says the Badshahnama.

"In a paper that Professor Mills read in Chicago on November 4, 1983 at the 17th Annual Meeting of Middle East Studies Association of North America, based on his preliminary research endeavors involving an archaeometric analysis of the so-called Muslim buildings in ancient Spain, Mr. Mills observed, 'Two specific potentially fertile monuments for the application of archaeometry are the Taj Mahal and the (so-called) Mosque of Cordoba. Neither face Mecca.
The (so-called) mosque that is part of the Taj complex faces due west whereas Mecca from Agra is 14 degrees 55 minutes south of west. It is oriented to the cardinal directions as would be typical of a Hindu temple in India."

Prof. Mills then describes how a wood sample he took from the rear, river-level doorway of the Taj and had it tested for carbon-14 dating by Dr. Evan Williams, Director of the Brooklyn College Radiocarbon Laboratory, provided that even the door was pre-Shah Jahan. Similar samples taken from the Fatehpur Sikri also proved that the township, usually attribute to the third generation Moghul emporer Akbar, is also much more ancient."

(source: Proof Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 273-274)

Tejo Mahalaya?

In the course of his research, P. N. Oak discovered the Shiva temple palace was usurped by Shah Jahan from then Maharaja of Jaipur, Jai Singh. Shah Jahan then remodeled the palace into his wife's memorial. In his own court chronicle, Badshahnama, Shah Jahan admits that an exceptionally beautiful grand mansion in Agra was taken from Jai Singh for Mumtaz's burial. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur still retains in his secret collection two orders from Shah Jahan for surrendering the Taj building. Using captured temples and mansions, as a burial place for dead courtiers and royalty was a common practice among Muslim rulers. For example, Humayun, Akbar, Etmud-ud-Daula and Safdarjung are all buried in such mansions. Oak's inquiries begin with the name Taj Mahal. He says this term does not occur in any Moghul court papers or chronicles, even after Shah Jahan's time.

The term "Mahal" has never been used for a building in any of the Muslim countries, from Afghanistan to Algeria. "The unusual explanation that the term Taj Mahal derives from Mumtaz Mahal is illogical in at least two respects. Firstly, her name was never Mumtaz Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani," he writes. "Secondly, one cannot omit the first three letters 'Mum' from a woman's name to derive the remainder as the name for the building." Taj Mahal, he claims, is a corrupt version of Tejo-Mahalaya, or the Shiva's Palace.

Oak also says the love story of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan is a fairy tale created by court sycophants, blundering historians and sloppy archaeologists. Not a single royal chronicle of Shah Jahan's time corroborates the love story. But she as not Shah Jahan’s first wife. Shah Jahan’s first wife, the queen, was a great grand-daughter of the ruler of Persia – Shah Ismail Safwi. Shah Jahan had numerous other wives and many consorts. He not only was married before taking Mumtaz as his wife but also married again after her death. In between these weddings he also used to take consorts by the hundreds into his harem. It is, therefore, futile to argue, as is traditionally done, that Shah Jahan was so devoted to Mumtaz as to lose all interest in life after her death and that he, therefore, perpetuated her memory in a magnificent monument.

During the 18 years of her married life she bore 14 children of whom 7 survived her. That meant in no single year was she free from pregnancy, which shows Shah Jahan’s utter disregard to his wife’s health, so much so that Mumtaz died soon after her last delivery. She was only 37 years of age.

Furthermore, Oak cites several documents suggesting the Taj Mahal predates Shah Jahan's era, and was a temple palace dedicated to Shiva worshipped by the Rajputs of Agra city. For example, Professor Marvin Miller of New York took a few samples from the riverside doorway of the Taj. Carbon dating tests revealed that the door was 300 years older than Shah Jahan.

Shah Jahan is often misrepresented in Indian histories as a fabulously rich Mughal. The image o his derives from the belief that he built a number of costly buildings while he actually did not build even a single one. Far from being a monarch possessing fabulous wealth Shah Jahan could hardly command any resources worth his name because his near – 30 –years reign was marred by 48 military campaigns. Shah Jahan’s relative poverty is fully borne out by Tavernier’s remark that from “want of wood” the scaffolding, including the support of arches, had all to be made of bricks. The reader may well consider whether a monarch who cannot muster even the timber necessary for a scaffolding, in a country like India which had vast stretches under dense forest, can ever hope or dream of ordering a building as magnificent and majestic as the Taj Mahal???

European traveler Johan Albert Mandelslo, who visited Agra in 1638(only seven years after Mumtaz's death), describes the life of the city in his memoirs. But he makes no reference to the Taj Mahal being built. The writings of Peter Mundy, an English visitor to Agra within a year of Mumtaz's death, also suggest the Taj was a noteworthy building long well before Shah Jahan's time. Oak points out a number of design and architectural inconsistencies that support the belief of the Taj Mahal being a typical Hindu temple rather than a mausoleum. Many rooms in the Taj Mahal have remained sealed since Shah Jahan's time, and are still inaccessible to the public. Oak asserts they contain a headless statue of Shiva and other objects commonly used for worship rituals in Hindu temples. Fearing political backlash, Indira Gandhi's government tried to have Oak's book withdrawn from the bookstores, and threatened the Indian publisher of the first edition with dire consequences.

(source: The Taj Mahal: The True Story - By P. N. Oak).

Nicolo Conti described the banks of the Ganges (ca 1420) as lined with one prosperous city after another, each well designed, rich in gardens and orchards, silver and gold, commerce and industry.

 

The City of Jaipur
The building of Jaipur began in 1727. The city turned out to be an astonishing well-planned one, based on the ancient Hindu treatise on architecture, the Shilpa Shastra. The town planner was a talented, young scholar and engineer, Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, whose family had been invited to settle in Jaipur from the distant state of Bengal by Raja Man Singh I.

Jaipur was built on a grid system. Its main streets, 119 feet wide were intersected at right angles by secondary streets, 60 feet wide, which were further criss-crossed by lanes and bylanes, 30 feet and 15 feet wide respectively. The streets were lined with fine buildings of uniform design and shaded by trees. In the middle of the main road run an aqueduct, and there were wells for drinking water at regular intervals, many of which are still used today. The city was divided into nine rectangular sectors (representing the nine divisions of the universe). Different streets were allotted for different professions such as potters, weavers, dyers, jewelers, and bakers.

Louis Rousselet, the well-known 19th century French traveler, wrote,

"The town is built in a style of unusual magnificence....I doubt whether at the time it was built there were many cities in Europe which could compare with it."

The 19th century English bishop, Heber, wrote that it was comparable to the Kremlin in Moscow. Raja Sawai Jai Sing II named the new city after himself (fortuitously Jaipur also means "City of Victory").

"... THE GOOD PEOPLE OF AMERICA BUILDED THEIR TOWNS AFTER THIS PATTERN, BUT KNOWING NOTHING OF JEY SINGH, THEY TOOK ALL THE CREDIT THEMSELVES."

Wrote Rudyard Kipling, Letters of Marquee, 1899

Raja Sawai Jai Singh II’s observatory prompted the Portuguese Viceroy in Goa to send an emissary to Jaipur in 1729 to study it. Later, as its fame spread, French and German scholars, astronomers, and priests also came here. Through his Portuguese friend, Padre Manuel de Figueredo, Raja Sawai Jai Singh II procured the latest astronomical texts and instruments from Europe.

Using his huge masonry instruments, he was able to detect errors in the well-known astronomical tables of Pere de la Hire, who like other European astronomers, used only standard-sized brass instruments. Raja Sawai Jai Singh II’s eclectic collection of astronomical instruments and manuscripts from all over the then known world are displayed at Jantar Mantar and the City Palace Museum. The astrolabe, is a kind of celestial map engraved on a 7 foot wide metal disc. He called it the Raj Yantra, and wrote two volumes on the principles and utility of the device, which became one of his proudest possessions.

Samrat Yantra - His great Samrat Yantra, for example, is basically a sundial, except that it is a massive 89 feet high and 148 feet wide. As a result, when the sun moves across the sky it casts a shadow on the finely calibrated quadrants on either side, which moves at a precise and measurable 0.08 inch every second. It was designed to measure local time as well as such things as zenith distances, meridian pass time as well as such declination of the stards with remarkable precision. Interestingly, the Samrat Yantra at each of his five observatories varies slightly in shape in order to ensure that the hypotenuse of its great triangle is aligned perfectly with the axis of the earth and the flanking quadrants are perfectly parallel to the Equator.

Other Instruments
In all, Raja Sawai Jai Singh II invented fifteen different instruments, all of them based on his principle of accuracy through gigantic size. They ranged from Ram Yantra, which determines the azimuths and altitudes of various heavenly bodies, to Misra Yantra, which, among other things, tells the time at four different foreign observatories. The instruments are in such a good condition that, surprisingly, they are still used today. Samrat Yantra, for instance, is consulted every year on the full moon night of Guru Purnima, along with the ancient Sanskrit texts, to predict the onset of the monsoon. One of the instruments on display at Jantar Mantar and the City Palace Museum is a telescope, indicating just how aware the Raja was of the latest technology of his time.

(source: Knopf Guide India : Rajasthan : Jaipur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Mount Abu Kota, Bharaatpur (Knopf Guides) pg 132-141).

For more information on art, please refer to chapter on Hindu Art). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor