The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s4.162

v4.c23.s4.162

The mausoleum of Shāh Jahān’s queen, although apparently complete in itself, was intended, however, as only one part of a more comprehensive architectural scheme. On the opposite side of the river, where is now the Mahtāb Bāgh, the emperor planned his own tomb, a replica of the Tāj but in black marble, the two monuments to be connected by a bridge. Tavernier definitely states that “Shāh Jahān began to build his own tomb on the other side of the river, but the war which he had with his son interrupted his plan, and Aurangzīb, who reigns at present, is not disposed to complete it”.¹ And in support of this contemporary record there is the testimony of the cenotaphs themselves and their position in the tomb-chamber of the Tāj. Here Mumtāz Mahall lies proudly in the centre, a fairly clear proof that the building was intended for her remains alone; subsequently, and on one side, was inserted the cenotaph of the emperor, evidently an afterthought because his own separate resting-place never matured. That Aurangzīb’s unfilial actions and bigotry generally were responsible for this project being abandoned there seems little doubt, and owing to these personal failings humanity has been deprived of an architectural composition which for romance, imagination and magnificence would have had no equal. With this emperor’s accession to power the course of the building art under the Mughuls came to an end. Aurangzīb added a few structures, some of them large and pretentious, to the long series of monuments erected by this dynasty, but compared with those of his predecessors they are decidedly inferior. The sudden decline of the art towards the middle of the seventeenth century may be traced to several causes. There is the obvious reason that at this time the Mughul empire itself had begun to totter, and with it the cultural activities patronised by the dynasty suffered neglect. Associated with this political and artistic decadence was the personality of Aurangzīb himself, whose philistinism and narrowness of outlook were largely responsible for the disintegration. On the other hand, the decline of the style may have been due to the natural progress of events. Under Shāh Jahān the country had experienced a period of unrestrained production, during which its exponents had reached the summit of achievement. The usual sequence to such a condition is a marked reaction, of which art history provides several notable instances, including among others that of the great schools of painting in Europe of the seventeenth century, whose finest efforts were followed by an interval of profound exhaustion. And so it was with the architecture of the Mughuls. It had endured its golden age, run its course, and even before the reign of Aurangzīb had begun to show signs of decadence. The shallow elegance of some of Shāh Jahān's later buildings, as for example the Machhī Bhawan in Āgra fort, is a forecast of what was about to take place. Its energies dissipated by the very number and grandeur of its conceptions, with nothing further possible, a period of sterility was inevitable. It is questionable whether any human power, even that of vigorous imperial patronage, could have changed the course of destiny or prolonged its life another span.