The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s4.91

v4.c23.s4.91

During the period, however, that the Sayyid-Afghān mode was approaching its logical conclusion at Delhi, it is significant of the unexpected course that events not infrequently take in Indian history, that in another and distant part of the country a group of buildings in this same style was being produced which are undeniably the finest of their kind. At Sasarām in Bihār, and in its neighbourhood, a series of tombs was erected, all probably within the decade before 1550, commemorative of the house of Sher Shāh Sūr and its association with the government of the lower Provinces. They are all buildings of noble proportions, the largest of them, that of Sher Shāh himself, being one of the most admirable monuments in the whole of India, and thoroughly expressive of the Indian genius. Much of this excellence is undoubtedly a tribute to the cultured intuition of Sher Shāh, which not only shows itself here, but, at a slightly later date, at Delhi also. From the imperial capital this Afghān governor obtained his ideas of what a royal mausoleum should be like, and from somewhat the same source he secured the services of the master-builder who was to put his plans into effect. The designer of these edifices was one Aliwāl Khān (whose tomb is one of the group), from his name apparently a native of the Punjāb, a skilled mason and evidently well acquainted with the art of tomb building as ordained by the court at Delhi. His first commission at Sasarām was the erection of a mausoleum for Hasan Khān Sūr, the father of Sher Shāh, a solid structure in much the same style as several of the royal or official tombs of the Sayyid or Lodī period. Viewed, however, as a whole this initial effort is not a complete success (Fig. 4). The uninteresting octagonal wall forming its middle story, unbroken by any opening, is a definite fault, and it seems not improbable that this tomb was of an experimental nature in view of what was to follow. Aliwāl Khān's next work, destined to be his *magnum opus*, was the mausoleum of his patron, a conception which, apart from its surpassing architectural merit, reveals an imagination of more than ordinary power. Standing in the midst of a spacious artificial lake, it forms an ideal funerary monument to such a remarkable soldier adventurer as Sher Shāh, a magnificent grey pile emblematic of masculine strength, and at the same time the embodiment of eternal repose.