The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c21.13

c21.13

Gaur, which under the name of Lakhnautî succeeded Pâtaliputra as the principal city of the Magadha country, became one of the capitals of the Pâla and Sena kings of Bengal. It was likewise sumptuously laid out with parks and bathing-tanks and extended for about nine miles along the bank of the Ganges. In 1194 it shared the fate of Kanauj when the last of the Sen dynasty was overthrown by one of Kutbu-d-Dîn's generals, and thereafter its craftsmen were employed in reconstructing its innumerable temples to suit Muhammadan ritual. Thus though the style of the mosques and other buildings which now remain is essentially Hindu and in no sense "Saracenic," as understood architecturally, there is nothing left of the architecture of the place belonging to the period treated in this volume. Benares and Ujjain, though historically two of the oldest and most famous cities of India, and even now of great architectural interest, contain few important buildings of the pre-Muhammadan period, most of them having fallen under the mailed fist of the iconoclast Aurangzîb in the seventeenth century.