The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.38

Language: English

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Operations on such a vast scale necessarily demanded an organised system of financial control, and we learn from the *Ta'rīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī* that a plan of every proposed edifice had to be made by the architect and scrutinised by the financial officer (Dīwān-i-Wizārat) responsible for the provision of funds. Whether the Finance Department was at liberty to modify the designs submitted to it is not stated, but it is quite clear that the strictest economy was enforced, and the effect of this economy coupled with the other restrictions under which the architects of Fīrūz Shāh had to struggle is only too apparent in their buildings. Like the monuments of the first Tughluq, these are virile and strong, wholly sincere in purpose and free from sham; but, with few exceptions, their construction is cheaper and their appearance incomparably colder and more vacuous. Red sandstone and marble, which had previously been used with telling effect, are now rarely seen; even in the most important edifices their place is taken by rubble and plaster. Local granite, to be sure, is employed for short heavy pillars and a few other members, but it too is generally plastered over or whitewashed and little attempt is made to turn its colour or texture to account. When first erected, these buildings of Fīrūz Shāh, like any Indian edifices of to-day, were dazzling white and, needless to say, had nothing in their aspect of the dark and sombre melancholy which age has imparted to them.

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Yet even their pristine whiteness could not atone for the monotonous bareness of their walls. What little surface ornament there was generally took the form of inscribed borders, medallions in the arch spandrels and such-like simple and conventional devices. Of the rich imaginative designs in which the Indian fancy rejoices, there were none; nor, on the other hand, was there, save in rare cases, that sense of aerial spaciousness which is able on occasion to compensate for the absence of decorative beauty. The virtues of this architecture reside in its vigour and straightforwardness; in its simple broad effects; and in the purposefulness with which it evolved new structural features or adapted old ones to its needs—the multi-domed roofing, for example, or the tapering minaret-like buttresses at the quoins. Its faults are seen in the monotonous reiteration of these self-same features, in the prosaic nakedness of its ideas, and in the dearth of everything that might make for picturesque charm or elegance. How much this architecture suffered from the lack of Hindu craftsmanship can best be gauged by comparing it with the work of the Lodī or early Mughul periods, when the magic touch of Hindu genius had again endowed it with life and warmth. The fact, however, that under the Tughluq dynasty Hindu influence was from one cause or another reduced to its lowest ebb, must not be taken to imply that it was altogether a negligible factor.

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The architects who designed these Tughluq buildings and the workmen who constructed them, though possessed, perhaps, of no exceptional skill, and though hampered by many restrictions, had nevertheless been born and bred amid Indian surroundings, and could not help expressing themselves in terms of Indian thought. Try as they might to adhere to the established formulas of Muslim art, they inevitably fell back on the forms and motifs with which they were familiar. Thus it came about that the flat lintel frequently usurped the place of the pointed arch, and that pillars, brackets, balconied windows, eaves and railings, besides a score of other features of Hindu origin, took their place naturally in an otherwise Muhammadan setting; and thus, too, it happened that much of the mentality underlying and controlling the design was fundamentally Hindu. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the longer the Muhammadans remained in India, the more deeply imbued did their art become with Indian feeling. Even though every individual detail of a building might be derived from an external source (a contingency that rarely happened), it still remained true that the brain which conceived the whole was working in obedience to Indian precept. Had Indian imagination been allowed freer play at this period in the development of Indo-Islamic architecture, a much higher level of aesthetic beauty would undoubtedly have resulted.

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As it is, we must be grateful that this imagination was not wholly absent.