History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c31.s6: Palace at Delhi.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c31.s6
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Palace at Delhi.
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Though the palace at Agra is perhaps more picturesque, and historically certainly more interesting, than that of Delhi, the latter had the immense advantage of being built at once, on one uniform plan, and by the most magnificent, as a builder, of all the sovereigns of India. It had, however, one little disadvantage, in being somewhat later than Agra. All Shâh Jahân's buildings there seem to have been finished before he commenced the erection of the new city of Shâh Jahânâbâd with its palace, and what he built at Agra is soberer, and in somewhat better taste than at Delhi. Notwithstanding these defects, the palace at Delhi is, or rather was, the most magnificent palace in the East—perhaps in the world—and the only one, at least in India, which enables us to understand what the arrangements of a complete palace were when deliberately undertaken and carried out on one uniform plan (Woodcut No. 431).
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The palace at Delhi, which is situated like that at Agra close to the edge of the Jamnâ, is a nearly regular parallelogram, with the angles slightly canted off, and measures 1600 ft. east and west, by 3200 ft. north and south, exclusive of the gateways. It is surrounded on all sides by a very noble wall of red sandstone, relieved at intervals by towers surmounted by kiosks. The principal entrance or Lâhor Gate (I) on the west faces the Chândni Chauk, a noble wide street, nearly a mile long, planted with two rows of trees, and with a stream of water running down its centre. Entering within its deeply-recessed portal, you find yourself beneath the vaulted hall (K), the sides of which are in two storeys, and with an octagonal break in the centre. This hall, which is 375 ft. in length over all, has very much the effect of the nave of a gigantic Gothic cathedral, and forms the noblest entrance known to belong to any existing palace. At its inner end this hall opened into a courtyard, 350 ft. square, from the centre of which a noble bâzâr (F, G) extended right and left, like the hall, two storeys in height, but not vaulted. One of these
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431. Palace at Delhi. (From a native Plan in the possession of the Author.)
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led to the Delhi gate (H) on the south, the other, which I believe was never quite finished, to the garden. In front, at the entrance, was the Naubat Khâna (A), or music hall, beneath which the visitor entered the second or great court of the palace, measuring 550 ft. north and south, by 385 ft. east and west. In the centre of this stood the Dîwân-i-’Âmm (B), or great audience hall of the palace, very similar in design to that of Agra, but more magnificent. Its dimensions are about 200 ft. by 100 ft. over all. In its centre is a highly ornamental niche, in which, on a platform of marble richly inlaid with precious stones,¹ and directly facing the entrance, once stood the celebrated peacock throne, the most gorgeous example of its class that perhaps even the East could ever boast of.² Behind this again was a garden-court; on its eastern side was the Rang Mahall (C), or painted hall, containing a bath and other apartments.
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¹ When we took possession of the palace every one seems to have looted after the most independent fashion. Among others, a Captain (afterwards Sir John) Jones tore up a great part of this platform, but had the happy idea to get his loot set in marble as table tops. Two of these he brought home and sold to the Government for £500, and placed in the India Museum. No one can doubt that the one with the birds was executed by Florentine, or at least Italian artists; while the other, already mentioned, which was apparently at the back of the platform, is a bad copy from Raphael’s picture of Orpheus charming the beasts. As is well known, that again was a copy of a picture in the Catacombs. There Orpheus is playing on a lyre, in Raphael’s picture on a violin, and that is the instrument represented in the Delhi mosaic. Even if other evidence were wanting, this would be sufficient to set the question at rest. It certainly was not put there by the bigot Aurangzîb.
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² It was broken up and carried off by Nâdir Shâh in 1739.
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This range of buildings, extending 1600 ft. east and west, divided the palace into two nearly equal halves. In the northern division of it were a series of small courts, surrounded by buildings apparently appropriated to the use of distinguished guests; and in one of them overhanging the river stood the celebrated Dîwân-i-Khâss (D), or private audience hall—if not the most beautiful, certainly the most highly ornamented of all Shâh Jahân’s buildings.³ It is larger, certainly, and far richer in ornament than that at Agra, though hardly so elegant in design; but nothing can exceed the beauty of the inlay of precious stones with which it is adorned, or the general poetry of the design. It is round the roof of this hall that the famous inscription runs: “If there is a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this,” which may safely be rendered into the sober English assertion, that no palace now existing in the world possesses an apartment of such singular elegance as this.
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³ South of this and between it and the Rang Mahall is the Samman-burj, projecting from the line of the walls. At the north end is the Shâh Burj and at the south the Asâd Burj.
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Beyond this to the northward were the gardens of the palace, laid out in the usual formal style of the East, but adorned with fountains and little pavilions and kiosks of white marble, that render these so beautiful and so appropriate to such a climate.
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The whole of the area between the central range of buildings to the south, and eastward from the bâzâr, measuring about 1000 ft. each way, was occupied by the haram and private apartments of the palace, covering, consequently, more than twice the area of the Escurial, or, in fact, of any palace in Europe. According to the native plan I possess, which I see no reason for distrusting, it contained three garden courts, and some thirteen or fourteen other courts, arranged some for state, some for convenience; but what they were like we have no means of knowing. Not one vestige of them now remains. Judging from the corresponding parts of the palace at Agra, built by the same monarch, they must have vied with the public apartments in richness and in beauty when originally erected, but having continued to be used as an abode down to the time of the mutiny, they were probably very much disfigured and debased. Taste was, no doubt, at as low an ebb inside the walls of the palace during the last hundred years as it was outside, or as we find it at Lucknow and elsewhere; but all the essential parts of the structure were there, and could easily have been disencumbered from the accretions that had been heaped upon it. The idea, however, of doing this was far from entering into the heads of our governors. The whole of the haram courts of the palace were swept off the face of the earth to make way for a hideous British barrack, without those who carried out this fearful piece of Vandalism, thinking it even worth while to make a plan of what they were destroying or preserving any record of the most splendid palace in the world.
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Of the public parts of the palace all that now remains is the entrance hall, the Naubat Khâna, the Dîwân-i-’Âmm and Khâss, and the Rang Mahall—long used as a mess-room—and one or two small pavilions. They are the gems of the palace, it is true, but without the courts and corridors connecting them they lose all their meaning and more than half their beauty.¹ Situated in the middle of a British barrack-yard, they look like precious stones torn from their settings in some exquisite piece of Oriental jeweller’s work and set at random in a bed of the commonest plaster.²
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¹ It ought in fairness to be added that, since they have been in our possession, considerable sums have been expended on the repair of these fragments.
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² The excuse for this deliberate act of Vandalism was, of course, the military one, that it was necessary to place the garrison of Delhi in security in the event of any sudden emergency. Had it been correct it would have been a valid one, but this is not the case. Without touching a single building of Shâh Jahân’s there was ample space within the walls for all the stores and matériel of the garrison of Delhi, and in the palace and Salîmgarh ample space for a garrison, more than doubly ample to man their walls in the event of an émeute. There was ample space for larger and better ventilated barracks just outside the palace walls, for the rest of the garrison, who could easily have gained the shelter of the palace walls in the event of any sudden rising of the citizens.