The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.38.3

v3.c30.38.3

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.