A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c18.98

c18.98

The foregoing details, rarely to be found stated with accuracy, help us to realize the grandiose scale on which the whole composition known collectively as 'the Tāj' was designed, and the absolute disregard of cost in realizing the design. Much of the credit for the vastness of the scale must be given to Shāhjahān himself, who, of course, is solely responsible for sanctioning the unparalleled expense. But nobody supposes that the Emperor was his own architect, and much interest attaches to the question, 'Who was the architect by whom this noblest of monuments was designed, and to what nation did he belong?' The controversy on the subject, lately revived, excites some heat in the disputants. I approach it simply as a case in which evidence should be weighed and appraised impartially. Sleeman's notion that Austin de Bordeaux, a skilled French engineer and craftsman employed by Shāhjahān, was the architect, and identical with the 'Master (Ustād) Īsā (Jesus)', also called, more correctly, Muḥammad Īsā Effendi, certainly is erroneous,² and his statement, first published in 1844, seems to be the sole foundation for the current assertions about the connexion of Austin with the Tāj. Balfour's *Cyclopaedia of India* (3rd ed., 1885) boldly asserts that 'Austin de Bourdeaux [was] an artist who erected the Taj at Agra'. For that assertion I believe that Sleeman's loose guessing is the only authority. The note recently printed by Dr. Burgess stating that the Tāj was 'most probably designed by Alī Mardān Khān, a Persian refugee', is opposed to the evidence of the Persian History of the Tāj, and I do not know on what grounds it is based.³