A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s2.15

c19.s2.15

In 1663, early in Aurangzēb's reign, Bernier saw and warmly admired the effigies of two elephants with riders which then stood at the Delhi Gate of the Delhi Fort. A few years later they were seen still in position by Thévenot. Subsequently they were broken up by order of Aurangzēb, and the fragments cast away. In 1863 the buried fragments were found, and after an interval some of them were pieced together and made into an absurd monster, which was set up in the Queen's Gardens, with a false inscription based on an erroneous guess of Sir Alexander Cunningham. Lord Curzon expressed a desire to reconstruct the groups from the broken pieces, but it proved impossible to carry out his wishes. A skilled European artist, Mr. R. D. Mackenzie, was commissioned to make a new model. He did so, and his work is preserved in the Delhi Museum. Native sculptors were then instructed to make two elephants without riders from that model. They carried out their orders as well as they could, and their productions have been erected on the old pedestals. The new elephants, consequently, have no connexion with the broken groups, the fragments of which are kept in the Museum. I understand that the Queen's Gardens monster has been destroyed. The experiment carried out under Lord Curzon's direction has not been a success. Mr. Mackenzie's model lacks the massive dignity which ancient Hindu sculptors were so well able to give to their elephant statues, and the enlarged copies by native carvers are lifeless, worthless things.