Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 5.10
Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable) 5.10
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- English
5.10.1
The Dutch have a factory in Agra, in which they generally keep four or five persons. Formerly they carried on a good trade in that city by the sale of broadcloths, large and small looking-glasses, plain laces, gold and silver laces, and iron wares; likewise by the purchase of anil, or Indigo, gathered in the neighbourhood of Agra, particularly at Bianes, two days' journey from the city, whither they go once every year, having a house in the place. The Dutch used also to make extensive purchases of cloths not only at Jelapour, but at Laknau, a seven or eight days' journey from Agra, where they also have a house, and despatch a few factors every season. It seems, however, that the trade of this people is not now very lucrative, owing probably to the competition of the Armenians, or to the great distance between Agra and Sourate. Accidents continually befall their caravans, which, to avoid the bad roads and mountains in the direct road through Goualeor and Brampour, travel by way of Ahmed-abad, over the territories of different Rajas. But whatever may be the discouragements, I do not believe the Dutch will follow the example of the English, and abandon their factory at Agra;
5.10.2
because they still dispose of their spices to great advantage, and find it useful to have confidential persons near the court always ready to prefer a complaint against any governor, or other officer, who may have committed an act of injustice or tyranny in any of the Dutch establishments in Bengale, or at Patna, Sourate, or Ahmed-abad. I shall finish this letter with a description of the two wonderful mausoleums which constitute the chief superiority of Agra over Delhi. One was erected by Jehan-Guyre in honour of his father Ekbar; and Chah-Jehan raised the other to the memory of his wife Tage Mehale, that extraordinary and celebrated beauty, of whom her husband was so enamoured that it is said he was constant to her during life, and at her death was so affected as nearly to follow her to the grave. I shall pass Ekbar's monument without further observation, because all its beauties are found in still greater perfection in that of Tage Mehale, which I shall now endeavour to describe.
5.10.3
On leaving Agra, toward the east, you enter a long, wide, or paved street, on a gentle ascent, having on one side a high and long wall, which forms the side of a square garden, of much greater extent than our Place Royale, and on the other side a row of new houses with arcades, resembling those of the principal streets in Dehli, which I have already described. After walking half the length of the wall, you find on the right, that is, on the side of the houses, a large gate, tolerably well made, which is the entrance of a Karvan-Serrah, and on the opposite side from that of the wall is seen the magnificent gate of a spacious and square pavilion, forming the entrance into the garden, between two reservoirs, faced with hewn stone.
5.10.4
This pavilion is an oblong square, and built of a stone resembling red marble, but not so hard. The front seems to me longer, and much more grand in its construction, than that of S. Louis, in the rue S. Antoine, and it is equally lofty. The columns, the architraves and the cornices are, indeed, not formed according to the proportion of the five orders of architecture so strictly observed in French edifices. The building I am speaking of is of a different and peculiar kind; but not without something pleasing in its whimsical structure; and in my opinion it well deserves a place in our books of architecture. It consists almost wholly of arches upon arches, and galleries upon galleries, disposed and contrived in an hundred different ways. Nevertheless the edifice has a magnificent appearance, and is conceived and executed effectually. Nothing offends the eye; on the contrary, it is delighted with every part, and never tired with looking. The last time I visited Tage Mehale mausoleum I was in the company of a French merchant, who, as well as myself, thought that this extraordinary fabric could not be sufficiently admired. I did not venture to express my opinion, fearing that my taste might have become corrupted by my long residence in the Indies; and as my companion was come recently from France, it was quite a relief to my mind to hear him say that he had seen nothing in Europe so bold and majestic.
5.10.5
When you have entered a little way into the pavilion approaching toward the garden, you find yourself under a lofty cupola, surrounded above with galleries, and having two divans or platforms below, one on the right, the other on the left, both of them raised eight or ten French feet from the ground. Opposite to the entrance from the street is a large open arch, by which you enter a walk which divides nearly the whole of the garden into two equal parts. This walk or terrace is wide enough to admit six coaches abreast; it is paved with large and hard square stones, raised about eight French feet above the garden; and divided the whole length by a canal faced with hewn stone and ornamented with fountains placed at certain intervals. After advancing twenty-five or thirty paces on this terrace, it is worth while to turn round and view the back elevation of the pavilion, which, though not comparable to the front, is still very splendid, being lofty and of a similar style of architecture. On both sides of the pavilion, along the garden wall, is a long and wide gallery, raised like a terrace, and supported by a number of low columns placed near each other. Into this gallery the poor are admitted three times a week during the rainy season to receive the alms founded in perpetuity by Chah-Jehan.
5.10.6
Resuming the walk along the main terrace, you see before you at a distance a large dome, in which is the sepulchre, and to the right and left of that dome on a lower surface you observe several garden walks covered with trees and many parterres full of flowers. When at the end of the principal walk or terrace, besides the dome that faces you, are discovered two large pavilions, one to the right, another to the left, both built with the same kind of stone, consequently of the same red colour as the first pavilion. These are spacious square edifices, the parts of which are raised over each other in the form of balconies and terraces; three arches leave openings which have the garden wall for a boundary, and you walk under these pavilions as if they were lofty and wide galleries. I shall not stop to speak of the interior ornaments of the two pavilions, because they scarcely differ in regard to the walls, ceiling, or pavement from the dome which I am going to describe. Between the end of the principal walk and this dome is an open and pretty large space, which I call a water-parterre, because the stones on which you walk, cut and figured in various forms, represent the borders of box in our parterres. From the middle of this space you have a good view of the building which contains the tomb, and which we are now to examine.
5.10.7
This building is a vast dome of white marble nearly of the same height as the Val De Grace of Paris, and encircled by a number of turrets, also of white marble, descending the one below the other in regular succession. The whole fabric is supported by four great arches, three of which are quite open and the other closed up by the wall of an apartment with a gallery attached to it. There the Koran is continually read with apparent devotion in respectful memory of Tage Mehale by certain Mullahs kept in the mausoleum for that purpose. The centre of every arch is adorned with white marble slabs whereon are inscribed large Arabian characters in black marble, which produce a fine effect. The interior or concave part of the dome and generally the whole of the wall from top to bottom are faced with white marble : no part can be found that is not skilfully wrought, or that has not its peculiar beauty. Everywhere are seen the jasper, and jachen, or jade, as well as other stones similar to those that enrich the walls of the Grand Duke's chapel at Florence, and several more of great value and rarity, set in an endless variety of modes, mixed and enchased in the slabs of marble which face the body of the wall. Even the squares of white and black marble which compose the pavement are inlaid with these precious stones in the most beautiful and delicate manner imaginable.
5.10.8
Under the dome is a small chamber, wherein is enclosed the tomb of Tage Mehale. It is opened with much ceremony once in a year, and once only; and as no Christian is admitted within, lest its sanctity should be profaned, I have not seen the interior, but I understand that nothing can be conceived more rich and magnificent. It only remains to draw your attention to a walk or terrace, nearly five-and-twenty paces in breadth and rather more in height, which runs from the dome to the extremity of the garden. From this terrace are seen the Gemna flowing below, a large expanse of luxuriant gardens, a part of the city of Agra, the fortress, and all the fine residences of the Omrahs erected on the banks of the river. When I add that this terrace extends almost the whole length of one side of the garden, I leave you to judge whether I had not sufficient ground for asserting that the mausoleum of Tage Mehale is an astonishing work. It is possible I may have imbibed an Indian taste ; but I decidedly think that this monument deserves much more to be numbered among the wonders of the world than the pyramids of Egypt, those unshapen masses which when I had seen them twice yielded me no satisfaction, and which are nothing on the outside but heaps of large stones piled in the form of steps one upon another, while within there is very little that is creditable either to human skill or to human invention.