A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s6.28

c19.s6.28

Passing by several interesting buildings exhibiting more or less decoration in coloured tiles, we come next to the tomb near Agra known as the Chīnī-kā-Rauza, which has had the advantage of being exhaustively described and illustrated by the late Mr. E. W. Smith in a volume mainly devoted to it. The building, a large octagonal domed tomb of uncertain date, supposed to have been built early in the reign of Aurangzēb, in memory of Afzal Khān, a poet who died in 1639, was originally covered on the outside from top to bottom with mosaic in *Kāshī* tiling of various colours, worked up into numerous patterns so as to form one unbroken flat surface. It is now much dilapidated. The tiles, ⅝ of an inch thick, are bedded in a layer of fine plaster an inch thick, which was laid on a stratum of coarser plaster two inches in thickness. The principal colours include blues, greens, orange, vermilion, lake, &c., in a variety of delicate shades with a metallic lustre, the unavoidable slight irregularities of the surface producing wonderful play of light. One illustration may be given to show the style (Plate CIX).²