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 " TRAV 
 
 AVELLER'S GUIDE TO AGRA 
 
 T 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 I'N! OF THE PAST HISTORY, THE ANTIQUITIES, 
 A - TIIK 1'KINCIPAL SIGHTS OF AGRA, TOGETHER 
 FTII SOME INFORMATION ABOUT AGRA AS IT IS 
 
 BY 
 
 VA CHANDRA [MUKERJI, M.A., 
 
 VAKIL, HIGH COURT, N.-W. P. 
 
 1892. 
 
 SEN & Co., 
 Delhi. 
 
. e 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 -A 
 
 . r^ . A, 
 THE TRAVELLER'S GUIDE TO AGRA 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE PAST HISTORY, THE ANTIQUITIES, 
 
 AND THE PRINCIPAL SIGHTS OF AGRA, TOGETHER 
 
 WITH SOME INFORMATION ABOUT .AGRA AS IT IS 
 
 BY 
 
 SATYA CHANDRA MTJKERJI, M.A., B.L., 
 
 M 
 
 VAKIL, HIGH COURT, N.-W. P. 
 
 1892. 
 
 SEN & Co., 
 Delhi. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 THE present book has been prepared with a 
 view to render by it every assistance as to reliable 
 information that the traveller to Agra might re- 
 quire. The first part of it deals with the past 
 history of Agra, and although it might seem almost 
 redundant to the educated native of India to whom 
 the facts there related are sufficiently well known, it 
 is hardly so in view of the fact that the travellers to 
 Agra comprise citizens from the remotest parts of 
 the civilised globe, and to the majority of those in 
 whose hands this book might be placed Indian his- 
 tory might not be a familiar study. We have in the 
 other chapters attempted to describe the principal 
 architectural monuments of Agra and of the neigh- 
 bourhood with all their details and quotations from 
 the most elegant descriptions given of them by emi- 
 nent writers. We have described Agra as it is, with 
 
 868633 
 
11 
 
 an account of the principal features of administrative 
 detail that might be interesting to the new comer. 
 There are many points with reference to the past 
 history of Agra and the architectural and aesthetic 
 value of its ruins, that are yet involved in keen 
 controversy, and with reference to which the opinions 
 of the most eminent authorities radically differ. In 
 all such cases we have given all the views and the 
 reasons by which they are supported, and added 
 such observations as suggested themselves to one, 
 who is no authority on antiquarian matters. The 
 present work has no pretensions of being in any 
 way superior to the other works on the subject, of 
 which all but one are entirely out of print. The only 
 handbook to Agra now available is heavily-priced 
 and as such is out of the reach of those who are not 
 in comparatively affluent circumstances, and it is 
 generally thought that a cheap work on the sub- 
 ject is felt as a want. To the city of Agra which 
 has nurtured the present writer in the prime of his 
 manhood, he is deeply grateful for many reasons, 
 and he would think his labours fairly repaid if this 
 
Ill 
 
 little book serves in any way to add a fraction, 
 however small, to the widespread fame and popular- 
 ity that it enjoys among the cities of the civilized 
 world. 
 
 SATYA CHANDRA MUKERJI. 
 
 AGRA, 
 August Slst, 1802. 
 
THE TRAVELLER'S GUIDE . TO . AGRA. . 
 
 CHAPTER I. . , - ; , . 
 THE PAST HISTORY OF AGRA. 
 
 MGRA, the imperial city of Akbar the Great and 
 the seat of that wonder and delight of the East, 
 the Taj Mehal, is situated on the Jumna about three 
 hundred miles from the point of its confluence with 
 the Ganges at Allahabad. It is now nothing more 
 than the ordinary capital of an Indian district, but 
 it had a great and historic past. Its history from the 
 year 1501 A. D., when Baber made it the capital of 
 the Mogul Empire, is well known ; but some eminent 
 scholars, who had taken pains to shift all the facts 
 connected with it previou* to that period, agree in 
 thinking that Agra had a place in the annals of 
 India from the earliest times. There is a place 
 named Batesar in the district, a place which is now 
 known for one of the largest horse-fairs of India, 
 which is otherwise called Surjapur, and with reference 
 to which the general tradition is that it was found- 
 ed by Raja Surasena of revered memory. Anti- 
 quarian scholars have, after a minute scrutiny, 
 found this tradition to be the correct representation 
 of a historic fact, and many have been the conjectures 
 
 A. 
 
2 
 
 about the probable date of Raja Snrasena. Colonel 
 Tod identifies Hi.a with the grandfather of the sport- 
 ing shepherd-god of the Hindus, Krishna. Gener- 
 al Cui'iiiiigham thinks that this mythical Snrasena 
 was none other than the nephew of the great king 
 Kama of Ayodhya. There are others who are of 
 opinion that this king Surasena gave the name to 
 the Suraseni tribe whose character is described by 
 the Greek historian, Arrian. Mr. Benson conjec- 
 tures that this Surasena w r as a prince of the famous 
 lines of the Pandus, and Mr. Carlleyle identifies 
 him with a Pramar king of Malwa who flourished 
 about A. D. 135. But there is no doubt that Surja- 
 pur or Batesar was a town of very great antiquity. 
 In its vicinity have been dug out coins which are 
 very ancient. The sculptures and other ruined 
 images w r hich were found in its temples and build- 
 ings fully establish its foundation before the Chris- 
 tian era. The researches of scholars in the Archae- 
 ological branch have discovered in the reservoir, 
 named Burhiya Tal in Tahsil Itmadpur, remains 
 which decidedly prove it to have been a Buddhist 
 structure. In other parts of the district such as 
 Khairagarh and tracts bordering on the deep ravines 
 of the Chambal, there have been found imbedded in 
 the earth cross-legged figures such as those peculiar 
 to the Buddhist monasteries. The most ancient 
 towns in the Agra district mentioned in mythical 
 
history owed allegiance to the powerful kingdom 
 which had Math Lira as its capital for a rather long 
 period. The name Agra is explained by three 
 different derivations. The most accepted one is that 
 it had its origin from the Hindu word agar meaning 
 salt-pan, a name which was given to it because the 
 soil is brackish and salt used to be made here once 
 by evaporation. Others derive it from the Sanskrit 
 word agra ( *ni ) which means the first of the 
 many groves and little forests where Krishna frolick- 
 ed with the dairy-maids of Brindaban, the story of 
 which appeals more powerfully than any other 
 chapter of Hindu mythology to the hearts and 
 imaginations of the large majority of those who 
 follow the Hindu faith. Others again deny the fabled 
 antiquity of the city, and assert that when Secunder 
 Lodi was sailing down the Jumna in his royal 
 yacht he asked his steersman to point out a site that 
 was fit for building a great city. There were several 
 mounds of earth all around, a peculiar feature of the 
 valley of the Jumna, ahead of the barge which carried 
 the precious weight of the Afghan emperor. The 
 steersman replied that the one which was ahead 
 of all in view would suit, and he used the word 
 Agra ( *RJ ) to express what he meant. Secunder 
 Lodi selected this site and called it Agra. There 
 is however an improbability underlying this story, 
 and it has been justly pointed out that a common 
 
Indian steersman during the age of the Lodis was 
 hardly likely to speak in Sanskrit, which had long 
 ceased to be the spoken language of the country, 
 if, as one school of philologists assert, it was ever 
 a spoken language at all. Other etymologists would 
 make Agra the city of the Agarwala Banias so com- 
 mon in the United Provinces, and some would make 
 it mean the first city, for its root in Sanskrit means 
 prior or first. One erudite scholar has no doubts 
 that the name Agra is intimately connected with 
 that of Aggrames, who is mentioned by Quintus 
 Curtius as the prince of the Parsi in the country of 
 Gran gar ides. 
 
 It is well known that Emperor Jehangir in his 
 autobiography has given a long description of the 
 city of Agra. The Emperor's writings are not 
 worthy of credit in those particulars where the ex- 
 ploits of his dynasty and of himself are narrated, 
 as those portions contain manifest exaggerations, 
 and are distorted almost beyond recognition. But 
 there seems to be no reason to doubt the statement 
 made by the imperial author that long before Akbar 
 or his immediate predecessors built that imposing 
 citadel which is one of the grandest of world's for- 
 tresses as far as the scenic effect is concerned, the 
 town was defended by a citadel of great antiquity. 
 The chronicles of the invasions of Mahmud of 
 Ghazni, who is a poetaster himself, sings of Agra as 
 
a large and important fortress. Sir Henry Elliot in 
 his well-known book, the Historians of India^ has 
 quoted an extract from the author who has celebrat- 
 ed Mahmud's exploits, which says that the fortress 
 of Agra stood amidst a patch of desert and with its 
 ramparts and battlements very strong and fortified. 
 Dowson and Elphinstone have brought to bear the 
 resources of their immense energy and vast practical 
 knowledge to the verification of the extract above 
 alluded to, and their labours have established the fact, 
 whose existence is also corroborated by other mate- 
 rials that amidst the bleak ravines of Tahsil Firoz- 
 abad there stood the rock fortress of Chandawar with 
 a city of immense magnitude surrounding it, found- 
 ed by Chandpal or Chandrasen, a prince of the 
 Bhadariya tribe of Rajputs. About the time that 
 the invasions of Mahmud were devastating the 
 richest cities of Hindustan, the Chohan Rajputs were 
 prospering in what is now the Agra district. The 
 confines of the Tahsil of Firozabad are rich with the 
 ruins of immense and massive fortifications which 
 clearly belong to this period both according to inter- 
 nal and external evidence. The local traditions 
 speak of a large immigration of the Rajput races 
 from the various kingdoms of historic Rajstan and 
 many tribes in the Tahsils of Karaoli and Khairagarh 
 still assert their descent from the Chohan and the 
 Sisodia clans of the Rajputs. When in 1193 A. D. 
 
6 
 
 Shihab-ud-din of Ghor hopelessly crushed PrithiRaj 
 of Delhi, the tract of country known as the Agra 
 district was parcelled between the Chohan Chief of 
 Chandawar and the Rathor Chief of Kanauj. In 
 1196 A. D. when the Mahomedan garrisons were per- 
 manently occupying Delhi and Koil ( Aligarh ) that 
 there was fought a decisive battle somewhere in the 
 neighbourhood of Chandawar which crushed Hindu 
 power in these parts and made over the territories 
 to the Mussalrnan governor of Biana. Mr. Benson 
 was successful in finding out a tradition that the 
 forces of the Raja of Chandawar withstood the at- 
 tacks of the Mahomedan invader for twelve years, and 
 at last succumbed when the holy man, Shah Shafi, 
 who was the genius of the place, sided with his co-re- 
 ligionists. Curiously enough, this same holy man 
 was said by the same persons to have immigrated 
 from Ispahan in the time of Akbar. But the Rajput 
 chiefs of Chandawar, though compelled to pay tri- 
 bute to the Moslem sovereigns, remained in a state 
 of semi-independence. They tried to raise the 
 standard of revolt at times when the Afghan chiefs 
 were paralysed by attacks from without or conspira- 
 cies from within. It is said that Ala-ud-din Khilji 
 laid a regular siege to Chandawar. When Tamer- 
 lane invaded India, it is alleged that the Rajput Chief 
 had a brief period of independence, who tried to ex- 
 tend his influence over the neighbouring territories. 
 
About 1430 A. D. we hear of the Hatkant princi- 
 pality which is located by the most approved au- 
 thorities within the modern district of Agra. Some 
 of the sovereigns of the Syad dynasty by repeated 
 incursions into this district re-established the author- 
 ity of the Delhi emperors, but after 1435 A. D. the 
 district asserts its independence for a time. But 
 the Hindu sovereigns who reigned within this 
 district finally disappeared from history when 
 in 1451 A. D. the first sovereign of the Lodi 
 dynasty thoroughly subjugated the Doab, and 
 Agra was made one of the principal cities of the 
 Moslem empire. The first undoubted mention of 
 Agra in the authentic annals of the Moslem empire 
 was in 1492 A. D. when Emperor Sekundar Lodi had 
 to come there to root out the repeated rebellion of 
 the rulers of Dholepur and Gwalior. In Tarikh-i- 
 Daudi, quoted in Dowson's Elliot, vol. iv., p. 450, 
 it is stated that Sekundar Lodi generally lived in 
 Agra, and it is even stated that it rose to the 
 proportions of a city during his time, while before 
 that it had been a mere village. In Tarikh-i-Jehan 
 Lodi, quoted in the same book, vol. v., p. 99, it is 
 stated that in 1505 there was a violent earthquake 
 at Agra, which did considerable damage. Emperor 
 Sekundar Lodi is said to have brought the Bhad- 
 huriya robbers to bay, and to have died at Agra 
 about the year 1517 or 1518 A. D. He was 
 
undoubtedly the founder of the village of Sekundra 
 now a suburb of Agra, in which the remains of the 
 greatest of the despotic monarchs the world has ever 
 seen mingle with the dust. The red stone building 
 which served afterwards as the final resting-place of 
 Akbar's Portuguese wife, Lcidy Mariam/ is said to 
 have been built originally by Emperor Sekundar 
 Lodi. Sekundar was succeeded by Ibrahim Lodi, 
 and in 1526 A. D. the empire of Hindustan passed 
 to Baber the sixth in descent from Timur, a Pa than 
 chief who advanced towards Hindustan from Cabul 
 and Badakshan. Agra having been the chief seat 
 of the Lodi family was reputed to contain a vast 
 amount of treasure, and Baber swept down the strip 
 of land between Delhi and Agra to seize it. The 
 first of the Mogul emperors fixed on Agra as his per- 
 manent residence. It was from Agra that he took 
 all steps to consolidate his rule over Hindustan. It 
 was from Agra that he marched out in 1527 A. D. to 
 meet the flower of Rajput chivalry under Rana Sanga 
 at Biana, where he gained a decisive but a keenly 
 contested victory. It was at Agra that he completed 
 the last part of those memoirs which give expres- 
 sion to many finer feelings of humanity to which it 
 appears his rude Tartar nature was not an absolute 
 stranger. It was at Agra that he died in 1530. 
 He was buried according to his own desire at Cabul 
 in a beautiful spot which he had himself selected. 
 
Rambagh which lies on the left bank of the Jumna 
 is by tradition one of those places where his body 
 rested for a while in the course of its weary journey 
 to Cabul. A keen controversy has long raged over 
 the question as to whether the Agra of Baber was 
 on the same side of the river as the Agra of Akbar 
 or was situated on the opposite side. The latter 
 theory which is supported by Carlleyle and Keene is 
 based on the facts that near the tomb of Itmadowlah, 
 and in the villages of Nunihai, Kachpura, and Rahar- 
 bagh, there have been found inscriptions and traces 
 of ancient buildings, which undoubtedly show that 
 they belong to the reigns of Baber and Humayun. 
 The fortifications which are yet found on the left 
 bank of the river are ascribed by local tradition to 
 Baber. But it has been asserted on the opposite side 
 that granting that Baber and Humayun had built 
 some edifices and like things on the opposite bank 
 of the river, it did not follow that the capital of 
 the Mogul empire did not stand on the site where it 
 was found by Akbar. " The existence," it is aptly 
 said, " of Southwork and Lambeth does not disprove 
 the simultaneous existence of London and West- 
 minister respectively, and it seems possible to grant 
 the construction of a court suburb on the left bank 
 of the Jumna without asserting the destruction or 
 abandonment of the older capital of the right. If 
 merely abandoned that older capital would have but 
 
 B. 
 
10 
 
 little time to become ruined between 1526 and the 
 days of Salim Shah ( 1545-53 ) who built on or near 
 its site." The vicissitudes of the reign of Humayun 
 are well-known. The first part of his reign lasted 
 from 1530 for ten years when he was driven out 
 of India by an enterprizing Afghan chief. During 
 this period Agra shared with Delhi the honour 
 of being the first city of the Mogul empire, but the 
 emperor was residing at Agra during the greater 
 part of the peaceful times. Shere Khan, openly bade 
 defiance to the imperial power and after a protracted 
 struggle Humayun was defeated at Chaunsa in 1539 
 and driven out of Hindustan. Humayun's adventures 
 during the next fifteen years, though a most interest- 
 ing chapter by itself, form no part of the history of 
 Agra. Shere Shah took possession of Agra and 
 made it the chief seat of his empire. History says 
 that Shere Shah was a great builder himself, and 
 adorned the empire under his charge with buildings 
 both useful and ornamental. The only remains of 
 Agra w r hich are said to have belonged to his reign are 
 the tomb and rnosque of Alawal Balawal or Shah 
 Yilayat, in Mohalla Nai-ka-Mandi. The mosque 
 has sunk into the ground till about the middle of 
 its walls. There is a curious story about it which 
 says that a camel driver in the imperial service had 
 quartered his beasts in the mosque notwithstanding 
 the expostulations of the said holy man. Upon 
 
11. 
 
 which the building began to sink till it had crushed 
 the unfortunate beasts, and did not stop sinking till 
 the saint had openly prohibited it. Shere Shah was 
 succeeded by his son, Selim Shah, who together 
 with his brother, Adil Shah, went on a visit to 
 Fathepur Sikri to the residence of the pious saint 
 Selim Christi, who had already attained eminence 
 by his miraculous powers and his piety. Emperor 
 Selim Shah founded the city of Selimgarh in 
 the vast plains around Delhi, and Mr. Keene 
 believes that it was he who surrounded Agra 
 with a wall and built that fortress which was 
 afterwards replaced by the one built by Akbar. The 
 successor of Selim being a weak and impotent king, 
 Humayun regained his lost empire and reigned for 
 a brief period from 1555 A. D. The Tarikh-i-Bada- 
 yuni relates how Agra suffered considerable damages 
 from an explosion during the reign of Emperor 
 Mahomed Shah Adil, an explosion which had its 
 origin in the sudden igniting of a vast mass 
 of gun-powder. Humayun died while suddenly 
 stepping down the polished stairs of a marble build- 
 ing at the time of the morning prayer, and was 
 interred in a well-known mausoleum of Delhi, which 
 is one of the most prominent sights of that place? 
 built in a curious mixture of Mogul and Pathan 
 architecture. The internal condition of Hindustan 
 at the time of the death of Humayun fully proved 
 
12 
 
 that the first two Mogul emperors had a genius for 
 the consolidation of their conquests as for the con- 
 quests themselves. Elphinstone has, in his History 
 of India, reviewed the condition of the Indian people 
 and the administration of the country with his usual 
 mastery of facts, and he has come to the conclusion 
 that the people were fairly prosperous and contented. 
 Akbar, the pride and the ornament of the Mogul 
 dynasty, was born at Amarkot in 1542 A. D. when 
 his father had been reduced to the utmost straits and 
 was flying from the pursuit of the successful Afghan 
 chief, Shere Shah. Trained in circumstances of no 
 ordinary difficulty, Akbar who scarcely can be said to 
 have been born in the purple acquired a character 
 cut out of the solid rock. During the first four years 
 of his reign his minister, Byram Khan, was practically 
 the supreme director of affairs. But Akbar's powerful 
 mind galled under the thraldom, and he shook him- 
 self free from it in 1560 A. D. not however without 
 the most strenuous exertions. It was in the midst 
 of these struggles to attain freedom from the control 
 of his minister that his mind attained that practical 
 cast which made him a successful ruler at the early 
 age of eighteen. The historical scholar must well 
 know the many brilliant passages in which the career 
 of Akbar at 18 confronting with a manly vigour the 
 many difficulties by which his throne was surround- 
 ed has been compared with that of the Young 
 
13 
 
 Pitt who at twenty-four successfully met the bold 
 designs of Napolean Bonaparte. The first seven 
 years of Akbar's reign was occupied with the vari- 
 ous campaigns which he undertook against the 
 numerous enemies of his throne, in many of which 
 his own revolted generals took the most prominent 
 parts against him. He came out singularly success- 
 ful from all these great trials, and he applied himself 
 to the task of constructing a sound system of ad- 
 ministration, establishing a polity on the principles 
 approved of by his enlightened conscience and laying 
 the foundations of what may be called an Indian 
 nationality. Fortunately for the world, a full and 
 systematic account of all of Akbar's measures of 
 internal administration has been preserved by a man 
 of letters who in addition to being able to write in a 
 cultured and flowery Persian style, had full know- 
 ledge of what he had written. The cardinal point 
 of Akbar's policy was to reconcile by every means 
 in his power the numerous body of his Hindu fellow- 
 subjects. He cut off all connections with Central 
 Asia, and espoused some Hindu princesses of the 
 highest lineage. He relaxed the bigoted intolerance 
 of his predecessors, and raised his Hindu subjects to 
 a level of perfect equality. He abolished all obno- 
 xious taxes imposed solely on the ground of being 
 unbelievers in the Koran, and strove to check the 
 practices of Suttee and infanticide. The Hindu pil- 
 
14 
 
 grims were allowed to visit their sacred places un- 
 molested, and the Hindu princes and nobles enjoyed 
 in no small a measure the unstinted confidence of the 
 emperor. The grandsons of a generation that had 
 fiercely fought Baber at Biana were appointed by 
 his illustrious grandson to be commanders of Mogul 
 legions and proconsuls of Mogul provinces. The 
 proud house of Oodeypur alone stood aloof from all 
 imperial connections, and it was conquered and sack- 
 ed by Akbar in 1568. Readers of Colonel Tod's 
 delightful volumes on Rajasthan, would recall the 
 graphic description given by him of the proud resist- 
 ance made by the then Raja of Chittore. Akbar 
 himself thought the conquest of Chittore to be no 
 mean exploit, and he caused to be placed on one of 
 the gates of the Agra Fort two colossal elephants 
 bearing on their backs the statues of Jai Mai, the 
 Ciiief of Chittore, and of Fatteh his brother. These 
 statues were removed to Delhi afterwards, and it was 
 there that Bernier saw them in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century. Gerieral Cunningham says that 
 Finch did not see these statues at Agra when he 
 visited that city in 1611, and therefore the probable 
 date of their removal to Delhi was before that year. 
 Mr. Keene however quotes a passage from Finch 
 ( apud Purchas ) which says that u beyond the gates 
 to the north and the west there was a second gate 
 over which there were two Rajahs in stone. " In 
 
15 
 
 1570 Akbar founded the suburban capital of Fateh- 
 pur Sikri, the details about which would be given 
 hereafter, and in 1586, after his return from the con- 
 quest of Gujrat, he built the fine tomb that enshrines 
 the relics of the famous saint, Selim Christi, the 
 spiritual father of Jehangir. From the time of 
 Akbar the custom of circumcision enjoined upon the 
 faithful by the Koran was discontinued in the im- 
 perial family. No Mogul emperor was circumcised 
 after his time, and a tradition almost grew up that 
 mutilation in such a delicate part of the body would 
 be considered a disqualification for the imperial 
 office. When under the rule of the East India 
 Company the privileges of the descendants of Tirnur 
 had been curtailed within the four corners of the 
 Delhi Palace and to the enjoyment of a royal stipend, 
 the nominal emperor, Bahadur Shah, instigated by 
 the favourite sultana of his old age, Queen Zeenut- 
 Mehal, pleaded before a British Viceroy that his son 
 by the younger wife should be preferred for the 
 purposes of succession to the honours of royalty, be- 
 cause his son by another wife Fakhr-ud din, who 
 was much older in age had been circumcised and 
 thereby rendered unfit for the dignity and emolu- 
 ments of the great Mogul. This argument attracted 
 the notice of western scholars, and Sir John Kaye, 
 the eminent historian of the Sepoy War, took the 
 trouble to shift it to the bottom. At his request 
 
16 
 
 Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, K. C. S. I., of Aligarli con- 
 tributed a luminous note on the subject which the 
 present writer has been able to peruse with the atten- 
 tion that it deserves. Sir Syed says that all the 
 Mogul emperors up to the time of Humayun had 
 actually been circumcised. His son, Akbar, who was 
 born and bred up amidst circumstances of no com- 
 mon privations, could not be circumcised, when the 
 father was in strange lands and with enemies or 
 false friends on all sides. He did not regain the 
 throne of Hindustan till Akbar was fully thirteen, 
 an age when the circumcision ceremony could not be 
 performed. The Hindu connections of the Emperor 
 Akbar and his descendants, made them look upon 
 the circumcision ceremony with disfavour, and it was 
 made a condition of all Hindu marriages that the 
 offspring should not be circumcised. Fukhr-ucL 
 din, whose case excited attention a few years previous 
 to the Sepoy War, had been circumcised for physical 
 reasons. Akbar, thus wanting the great external 
 sign of the faith of the prophet, and having a mind 
 at once capacious and enlightened, which could look 
 on all things with perfect freedom from prejudice, 
 was practising religious liberty in an age when the 
 faggots of the Inquisition and the infallible decrees 
 of the Holy See were a not uncommon spectacle in 
 Europe. At an age when Charles V. and Phillip II., 
 the Duke of Alva and the Duke of Parma, were 
 
17 
 
 trying by every means? that couM suggest themselves 
 to haughty tyrants and with all the assistance that 
 the gold of the newly discovered tracts of America 
 then at their absolute disposal could supply, to put 
 an end to the irrepressible Protestants of that part of 
 Europe which had been saved from the waves of the 
 ocean only by human ingenuity, Akbar was enter- 
 taining Beer Bal and Todar Mai near his person 
 and allowing himself to be influenced by the voice 
 of his Hindu subjects in every act of State. His 
 revenue settlement which was due to the wisdom 
 and sagacity of his minister, Todar Mai, has furnish- 
 ed a model in after times to the British rulers, and 
 is based on a correct estimate of the soil, the pro- 
 duce, their average market value, and the limitation 
 of the State demand on the cultivators. Under 
 Akbar's orders all the cultivated area in his domains 
 was correctly measured out, and the State demand 
 was limited to one-third of the produce commuted 
 to a money value on the average market price for the 
 last nineteen years. The food-grains were grown 
 under this system, and the inferior sorts of cereals 
 were raised by the cultivators on rather easy terms. 
 Thus the security of the produce against State exac- 
 tions and the protection given under the strong arm 
 of law to every man to reap w 7 hat he sows which 
 are the main pillars of the British administrative 
 system were also the mainstay of Akbars revenue 
 
 c. 
 
18 
 
 policy. Akbar paid his officers in cash and the sys- 
 tem of farming out the land revenue which was 
 fraught with so much oppression to the people was 
 almost abolished. The evidence of contemporary 
 European travellers is forthcoming to show that he 
 was frugal in his habits, merciful and justice-loving, 
 and used to dispense justice to his subjects daily 
 from a part of the palace which is still pointed out 
 to the traveller. The Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazal, 
 which had been translated by Professor Blochmann 
 of the Calcutta Madrassa, gives to the European 
 readers a full account of Akbar's administration, his 
 personal character, and the magnificence of his court. 
 We shall deal elsewhere with Akbar's relations to 
 Christianity. His last years were embittered by the 
 rebellion of his sons, and the vigour of his youthful 
 years forsook him amidst domestic trials and diffi- 
 culties. He died in the faith of Islam, and he almost 
 lost sight in his last moments of that peculiar creed 
 of which he had been the apostle and whose for- 
 mula was God is great and Akbar is his prophet. 
 The principal buildings of Akbar yet extant 
 are the tomb of Humaynn at Delhi, the fort 
 at Agra and the palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, the Ak- 
 bar's Musjid, the Kali Musjid, founded by Muzaffar 
 Hossain, father of that empress of Shah Jehan who 
 lies buried in the Kandhari garden and the eunuch's 
 Mosque at Loha-ki-mandi ( Musjid Mukhannasan ). 
 
19 
 
 Whether the tomb at Sikandra was built by Akbar 
 or by his son is a question that has elicited a vast 
 mass of discussion. There is one school of writers 
 who think that the present tombs of the Mahomedan 
 sovereigns were made to serve as pleasure gardens 
 and were used as such during the lifetime of the 
 builders, and that after death, instructions were issued 
 for their interment in those places so that the place 
 became invested with a sombre interest. Follow- 
 ing this theory it is said that Akbar himself built 
 the edifice at Secundra and the present writer has 
 been able to trace a tradition in the village of 
 Secundra to the same effect. Another school of 
 writers however place the tomb at Secundra amidst 
 the architectural achievements of Jehangir. 
 
 Jehangir, the son of Akbar by a Rajput prin- 
 cess, had alienated the feelings of his father by his 
 unruly conduct, and it was expected that the em- 
 peror would make either Prince Khasru or Prince 
 Sultan Kharrurn, afterwards known; as Shah Jehan, 
 his heir. But as he drew near his end, the old Em- 
 peror was reconciled to Jehangir who succeeded in 
 the natural course of things. Jehangir established 
 a capital in the north, at Lahore, and it was there 
 that he lived towards the close of his reign, but his 
 earlier years had been spent at Agra. An authentic 
 account of Jehangir's court can be obtained from 
 the descriptions given by Sir Thomas Roe who came 
 
20 
 
 to that Court as the accredited ambassador of King 
 James I. Sir Thomas Roe says that the emperor 
 though not utterly devoid of good qualities, was 
 very fond of hard drinking and a debauchee. The 
 questions that the emperor put with the greatest 
 earnestness in a private interview related to the 
 wines that could be had in England, the amount 
 usually drunk there by every individual, how they 
 were made, and as to whether the best of them could 
 be made in India. From the time that Jehangir 
 married the celebrated Nur Jehan she had the chief 
 control of the counsels of the empire, her father and 
 afterwards her brother being the Prime Ministers. 
 When the father of Nur Jehan better known by his 
 after title of Nawab Itimad-uddowlah, died in Agra, 
 the empress intended to build a solid silver 
 mausoleum over his remains, but was only dissuaded 
 by the argument that silver was likely to excite the 
 cupidity of robbers and that marble would be more 
 beautiful and lasting. Sir Thomas Roe says that 
 the administration of the empire had considerably 
 declined from the regularity that obtained under 
 Akbar. The English ambassador expresses himself 
 perfectly bewildered with the size and splendour of 
 Agra then the chief city of the great Mogul. Jehangir 
 tells us in his autobiography that Agra was a 
 great city during his reign, four Jcos in breadth and 
 ten in circumference, on the right bank of the Juinna 
 
21 
 
 and about two Jcos in breadth and three in circum- 
 ference on the Doab bank. There were public and 
 private buildings ofgreat size and beauty in almost 
 every btreet, and the population was so dense and 
 the streets so crowded that even in ordinary times 
 the citizens found no little difficulty in passing each 
 other. A fabulous amount of wealth was said to 
 circulate among the citizens in the course of every 
 day, and it was said that the number of horses sold 
 in the city each day during eight dry months of the 
 year came up to about six thousand of the Arab 
 breed from Kabul. Calbanke writing to Sir Thomas 
 Smith in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 speaks of Agra as a great and populous city entirely 
 built of stone with a great deal of merchandize, and the 
 whole city was even more imposing than the Lon- 
 don of the age. Finch's remarks about the splen- 
 dours of the nobles, iu that they never allowed the 
 garments of their concubines having been once worn 
 ever to be put up again but ordered them to be 
 buried into the earth until they decayed, have been 
 often quoted. European travellers say too that there 
 were many noblemen who kept in regular employ so 
 many as a thousand masalchis (torch-bearers). The 
 European travellers who have described the reign of 
 Jehangir, were Hawkins, Roe, Finch, Terry and 
 Coryat whose accounts all agree in saying that Agra 
 was a most magnificent city, worthy to be the capital 
 
22 
 
 of the great Mogul. The buildings of Agra which were 
 built during the reign of Jehangir, are the Haminam 
 of All Verdi Khan in the Chipitola section of. the 
 town ( built, as the inscription on it says, in 1621 ) r 
 a mosque at the entrance of the Shahganj road, the 
 mosque of Muatmid Khan in the Kashmiri Bazar, 
 the stone palace about half the distance between Fort 
 and the Taj occupied by Islam Khan Rumi. Near 
 Rambagh there is a tower and garden called after 
 Bulund Khan, the chief eunuch of Jehangir's palace. 
 About a dozen Europeans who visited India during 
 Jehangir's reign lie buried in the Protestant cemetery 
 of Agra, while some Catholics rest in the quarter of 
 the city specially appropriated to their use. In 1628 
 not without some intrigues, Prince Khurram was 
 proclaimed emperor under the title of Emperor Shah 
 Jehan. During the early part of his reign there was 
 the rebellion of Khan Jehan Lodi, which compelled 
 the emperor to take the field in person in the Deccan. 
 The rebellion was quelled in 1632 when the emperor 
 returned to Agra. It was during this campaign in 
 the Deccan in which the emperor was accompani- 
 ed by his favourite sultana Mamtaz-i-Mahal that 
 she died in being delivered of her eighth child. 
 Her body was embalmed and .carried back to Agra ? 
 and Shah Jehan prepared for its reception the 
 immaculate Taj Mehal which is by universal con- 
 sent the most splendid tomb in the world. We 
 
23 
 
 shall describe it at length later on, but it might 
 be mentioned here that the inscription over the 
 front gateways gives 1648 as the year when it 
 was completed. Facing the Taj, on the opposite 
 bank of the river, are to be found the remains of a 
 garden called by some Mahtab Khan's garden 
 and by others as the edifice which had been de- 
 signed by Shah Jehan for the reception of his 
 own mortal remains, to be connected with the 
 tomb of his queen by a splendid bridge. There 
 are to be found yet the remains of the foundations 
 of some large building sought to be erected on 
 the spot. The local tradition is that it was the 
 appointed place for Shah Jehan's tomb, and it is 
 such an old one that Tavernier notices it so far 
 back as 1666. In 1639 the chaste and beautiful 
 palace of Shah Jehan at Delhi was completed, and in 
 that year the capital was removed to New Delhi, 
 otherwise called Shahjehanabad. Shah Jehan add- 
 ed some parts to the Agra Fort which would 
 be noticed in detail hereafter, and of which the 
 most important are the Shish Mahal, the Nagina 
 Mosque, and the well-known Moti Masjid. The 
 Jami Masjid to the north-west of the Agra Fort 
 w r as finished in 1649, and the Idgah Mosque near 
 the village of Namner belong to this reign. 
 The Motibagh and the Chini-ka-roza also date 
 from this reign. Firoz Khan's tomb, three miles 
 
24 
 
 south of Agra on the Gwalior road, is a build- 
 ing of interest. Shah Jehan was attacked with 
 a serious illness in 1657, and there was a regular 
 scramble for empire among his four sons. Dara, 
 the eldest, was at Delhi and Raja Jaswant Singh 
 commanded his forces. Aurangzeb, the third 
 son, was a crafty and energetic man, and he suc- 
 ceeded in routing Dara's forces and gaining the 
 upper hand in the struggle. He placed his 
 father in honorable confinement at Agra and had 
 all his brothers made short work with. Mr. 
 Keene is of opinion that the last cruel scenes of 
 Dara's life were enacted at Agra, but Monstuart 
 Elphinstone places them at Delhi. There is still 
 on the bank of the Jumna, some little distance 
 north of Agra Fort, a Chhatri known as that of 
 Raja Jaswant Singh, and tradition says that it 
 marks the spot where the remains of that Raja 
 were consigned to flames. The fact seems how- 
 ever improbable in view of the well known his- 
 torical fact that Raja Jaswant Singh died while 
 commanding his forces at Cabul. Of the other 
 buildings in Aurangzeb's reign we might men- 
 tion the Hall of Public Audience within the Agra 
 Fort whose date is given as 168i and one Screen 
 contributed to the Taj Mehal. Agra was now ra- 
 pidly declining, and the head quarters of the 
 Mogul empire had been transferred permanently 
 
25 
 
 to Delhi. We all know how during the latter part 
 of Aurangzeb-8 reign, the Maharattas began to 
 give trouble in the south. It is less commonly 
 known that in the neighbourhood of Agra there 
 was a Jat rebellion which at one time rose to 
 such proportions that it was necessary to organ- 
 ize a large well-equipped force against them, 
 commanded by a prince of the blood. Elphin- 
 stone speaks ( book XL, chap. 4, ) of an auto- 
 graph letter of the emperor which deals with the 
 repression of the Jat revolts in the neighbour- 
 hood. Aurangzeb died in 1707, and the Agra dis- 
 trict took an important place in the struggle for 
 empire that ensued among his sons. Mukhtyar 
 Khan, the governor of Agra, who was partizan 
 and father-in-law of Azam, was defeated and thrown 
 into prison by Moazzam. There was a drawn 
 fight between Azam and Moazzam at Jajau in the 
 Khairagarh tehsil which resulted in the victory of 
 Moazzam, a victory commemorated by a mosque and 
 hostel at Jajau which might still be seen. It was in 
 this struggle that we first hear of the Jat chief, Chura- 
 man, who fought by the side of Moazzam. The Agra 
 district was also the scene of the fierce battle 
 between Jehandar Shah and his nephew, Furrokh 
 Shere, in 1713, in which the forces of the reigning 
 emperor were overthrown and the imperial sway 
 passed into the hands of the conqueror. The site 
 
 D. 
 
26 
 
 of the battle is said to have been Kuchbiheri, a 
 place which has been identified with Bichpuri. 
 Furrokh Shere, having attempted to overthrow the 
 authority of the Sayads, his principal supporters, was 
 murdered in 1719 A. D., and at his death the Agra 
 garrison revolted under the leadership of one Mitra 
 Sen. The Sayads, having set up another puppet 
 king, came down to Agra to suppress the rebellion, 
 and the garrison surrendered to Hussain who gave 
 up the city of Agra to spoliation, and seized a con- 
 siderable amount of valuables that were among its 
 most precious possessions. To this invasion is attri- 
 buted the loss of that famous tiara of pearls which 
 was used to be placed, by order of emperor Shah 
 Jehan, over the tomb of the lady of the Taj on the 
 anniversaries of her marriage and on the nights of 
 every Friday, the sacred day of the week accord- 
 ing to Moslem estimation. During the reign of 
 Mahomed Shah the city was honored with a visit 
 from the emperor who organized from this place 
 in 1721 the expedition against Sayad Abdullah. 
 The Mogal empire crumbled into pieces after the 
 death of Mahomed Shah, and Agra became only 
 the residence of a viceroy from that period. 
 Saadut Ali Khan, the founder of Nawabs of Luck- 
 now, was appointed the first viceroy of Agra. 
 The Mogal empire had left in Agra some of those 
 grand edifices which would serve to recall to the 
 
27 
 
 minds of the most distant generations the states- 
 manship of Akbar and the munificence of Shah 
 Jehan. A comparison has often been instituted 
 between these great monarchs, and Akbar has 
 been said to resemble his great contemporary, Queen 
 Elizabeth ; and for Shah Jehan a parallel has been 
 found in that Roman emperor Severus the story of 
 whose magnificence has been given to the world 
 in the immortal pages of Gibbon. After a care- 
 ful scrutiny of the statements of comtemporary 
 Mahomedan historians, Elphinstone is of opinion 
 that the reign of Shah Jehan was the most flour- 
 ishing period of Mogal history, and his unparal- 
 lelled magnificence seems to have brought no severe 
 strain on him financially. Trustworthy accounts 
 state that at his death Shah Jehan left a vast ac- 
 cumulation of bullion, coin and jewels of every 
 description. From the palmy days of Agra we 
 have now to lead the reader through a long story 
 of internal struggles to the days when Agra finally 
 surrendered to the arms of the British. Saadut All 
 fought vigorously against the Jat invaders and 
 the numerous robbers who invaded the district and 
 succeeded in holding them in check for some time. 
 On being promoted to the viceroyalty of Oudh, he 
 appointed Rai Nilkanth Nagar as viceroy in his 
 place who however was unable to cope with the 
 difficulties of the situation. He was superseded by 
 
28 
 
 Jai Singh Sewai of Jaypur who had some sharp 
 encounters with the Jats under their leader, Chura- 
 man. The first attempted Maharatta invasion of 
 Agra was in 1725, when they made Agra the base 
 of their operations against Gwalior. In 1736 
 A. D. their chief, Baji Rao, openly commenc- 
 ed operations against this district and seized 
 several portions of it. The domains of the Raja of 
 Bhadawar in Tahsil Panahat were appropriated 
 by them, and the Maharatta general, Mulhar Rao 
 Holkar, took hold of Batesar. On hearing this news 
 Saadut AH advanced from Oudh and completely 
 defeated Baji Rao. But the check received by the 
 Maharattas was a merely temporary one, and Baji 
 Rao succeeded in making his w r ay to Delhi. The 
 nominal governor of 'the Deccan in these days was 
 Nizam-ul-mulk. the ancestor of the long and proud 
 line of the Nizams of the Deccan, who was too 
 deeply involved in the struggles against the rising 
 power of the Maharattas in the South. Taking 
 advantage of his continued absence from Agra and 
 of the distractions to the empire from the invasion 
 of Nadir Shah, the Jat chief who then ruled at 
 Bharatpur, Suraj Mai, nephew of Churaman, an- 
 nexed the greater part of the Agra district between 
 1738 and 1754. Nadir Shah besieged Agra in 1757 
 and Ahmed Shah Durrani c took Delhi, sacked Ma- 
 thura, and overran Bharatpur. ' There was a sharp 
 
29 
 
 encounter at Agra between the Durrani chief and 
 the governor Fazal Khan, in which the trying sum- 
 mer heat of the city did more service than the arms 
 of her soldiers, the soldiers from the cool uplands of 
 Afghanistan retiring from the burning winds of Agra. 
 In 1761 the Jat chief, Suraj Mai, annexed the Agra 
 city to his dominions and was confirmed according 
 to the authority of Major Thorn in the possession of 
 all the territories that he had annexed as the price of 
 his neutrality in the third battle of Panipat between 
 Ahmed Shah Durrani and Sadaseo Eao Bhow. Mr. 
 Keene gives 1764 as the date of the Jat capture 
 of the city of Agni. It was during this capture 
 of the city that tradition ascribes the shooting 
 away of the minarets on the gate of the Sikandra, 
 the removal of the armour and books of Akbar 
 from that historic building, and the melting down 
 of the massive silver doors of the Taj which are said 
 to have cost considerably over a lac. The year 1765 
 saw the Raja of Bhadawar driven out from tahsil 
 Panahat, and the entire portion of sub-divisions 
 forming the^modern district in the possession of the 
 Jat conquerors. Jawahir Singh, the successor of 
 Suraj Mai, took his seat on the black throne of Jehan- 
 gir, a fact which is said to have caused a long fissure 
 in the middle of the stone. Dow gives a description 
 of Agra at this period dwelling specially on the 
 incompetency of Jawahir as a ruler. The Maharattas 
 
30 
 
 cast a longing eye on Agra about 1770 A. D. and 
 the imperial minister, Najaf Khan, on obtaining re- 
 cognition from Delhi as the rightful possessor of all 
 that he would be able to seize, marched in full force 
 against the Jats and the Maharattas in 1773. He 
 succeeded in expelling both, and the Jat possession 
 of Agra terminated. Authorities differ as to the exact 
 date of this termination. Mr. Growse would think 
 that the Jats were in uninterrupted possession till 1774 
 A. D. Mr. Keene however considers it more prob- 
 able that they were excluded from it temporarily by 
 the Maharattas, and finally expelled in 1774. Nnjaf 
 Khan lived in Agra as emperor from 1774 to 1779 
 when he left for Delhi where he died in 1782. 
 Najaf had appointed Mahomed Beg as the governor 
 of Agra and during the confusion that ensued on 
 the death of the former he was the virtual ruler 
 of Agra. The Maharatta chief, Madhaji Scindia, 
 who had been summoned to aid the feeble emperor 
 at Delhi entered the district of Agra in 1784, and 
 proceeded to annex it to the Gwalior dominions. 
 The llaja of Bhadawar and the Jaclon chief of Kotla 
 made their peace as best they could, and Scindia 
 succeeded in getting an imperial firman conferring 
 on him these territories in perpetual grant as their 
 rightful owner. Raynji Patel was appointed to gov- 
 ern Agra on behalf of the Gwalior Chief. Ismail 
 Beg, a dashing soldier, aided by Gholam Kadir, son 
 
31 
 
 of the Nawab of Najibabad in Bijnor, laid siege 
 to Agra in 1787, and a fierce battle ensued between 
 Scindia's French general, De Boigne, and the Mus- 
 sulman invaders in which the latter were victo- 
 rious. In the year 1794, Madhaji Scindia was 
 succeeded by his nephew, Daulat Rao Scindia, in 
 whose employ were the French general Perron 
 and the Dutch generals John and George Hessing. 
 The European generals were then usually be- 
 lieved to be creatures of Napolean the Great, and 
 Agra surrendered to their arms in 1799, and was 
 placed under European charge. John Hessing, who 
 died in 1802, lies buried in the Roman Catholic 
 cemetery. 
 
 Agra remained as an integral part of the 
 dominions of Scindia until it was surrendered to 
 the British after Lake's victories at Delhi and Las- 
 wari. The Maharatta rule has left but little behind 
 it at Agra that might recall it to future generations. 
 It is alleged by some that the Maharattas were 
 instrumental in changing the name of " Ararnbagh" 
 (garden of rest) to Rambagh, but it has been 
 pointed out on the other hand, that there are 
 gardens bearing the name of Rambagh in cities 
 far to the north of Agra which were always under 
 Mahomedan influence and domination. The conflict 
 that ensued between Scindia and the English was a 
 mere conflict for supremacy in Upper India. The 
 
32 
 
 two principal objects to which the attention of 
 General Gerrard, afterwards Viscount Lake, was 
 directed by the Governor-General the Marquis of 
 Wellesley, were " the destruction of the power of 
 the French party established on the banks of the 
 Jumna under Monsieur Perron and the extension of 
 the British frontier in the possession of Agra, Delhi, 
 and a chain of posts on the right bank of the Jumna, 
 for the protection of its navigation." Major Thorn, 
 the historian of the war, has given a graphic account 
 of all the incidents connected with this war. which 
 it is not necessary to incorporate here. There was a 
 siege of Agra ( October 10-18 ) by Brigadier-General 
 Clarke and Colonel M'Culloch and the British 
 battery opened fire with deadly effect on the besieged. 
 The garrison sued for terms, but Lake would give 
 them no other terms than that they might march 
 out unmolested only with their clothes, on leaving 
 all property, public and private, behind them. The 
 garrison would not accept these terms, and held out 
 to the last. The fort capitulated and passed into the 
 possession of the British. The breaches that had 
 been made in Shah Jehan's beautiful screens by 
 Lake's showers of grape and canister are still pointed 
 out by native guides, but it appears to have been 
 an undoubted historical fact that Lake's bombard- 
 ment was on the side of the Taj and that these 
 injuries which were undoubtedly made by cannon balls 
 
33 
 
 were inflicted during some earlier struggle of winch 
 the memory has died out. Mr. Wright, who visited 
 Agra in 1800 A, D., notices their existence. Mr. 
 Keene adds that Lake's troops entered by the Amar 
 Singh gate, and had nothing to do with the north 
 side of the Fort. The English soldiers gave up the 
 fort to booty, and among the prizes that were 
 recovered were 164 pieces of heavy artillery and 
 among them that great brass gun which had acquired 
 reputation in history as the great gun of Agra. 
 It was made of brass and splendidly gilt, and was 
 commonly believed to have been made of the precious 
 metals. It seemed to be a precious possession, and 
 was eagerly sought for at a price of a lakh of rupees 
 by those who wanted to keep it as their own property, 
 but the Governor-General wanted to send it as a 
 present to His Majesty King George III. of England, 
 and it was embarked in a country boat for the above 
 purpose. The boat sank into the Jumna, and no 
 mention is made by history or tradition as to 
 whether its precious freight was attempted to be 
 rescued. The district of Agra passed under 
 British control by the treaty of Suraj Anjan Gaon, 
 dated December 30th, 1803, by which the perganas 
 Karahra, Sarendhi, Jagner, Malpiira, Khairagarh, 
 Kiroali, Fathepur-Sikri, Iradatnagar, Shamsabad, 
 Lohamundi, and Narsing, were ceded in perpe- 
 tuity to the Hon'ble the East Iiidia Company. The 
 
 B. 
 
34 
 
 treaty under notice describes them to be under tbe 
 governorship of the brothers Hessing : their revenue 
 from customs and the mint amounted to Rs. 82,500, 
 their land revenue amounted to Rs. 8,67,462. Thus 
 the treaty mentions all the existing sub-divi- 
 sions of Agra with the exception of the tahsil of 
 Bah-Panahat, which was held at the time by the 
 Bhaduriya Raja, an adherent of the Hon'ble John 
 Company. The oldest inhabitants of Agra in the 
 last generation used to mention that there occurred 
 a violent earthquake in the year 1803, and there 
 was a violent storm at Kiraoli on the 3rd June, 
 1804. On the 5th June, 1804, Agra formed the 
 base of operations against the army of Holkar. 
 Lord Lake visited Agra and led his army up- 
 country from that place on the 1st October, first 
 to Delhi, and then to pursue the defeated foe over 
 many districts. One account ascribes to Lord 
 Lake the unpardonable act of vandalism in shoot- 
 ing away the minars of Akbar's tomb, but this* 
 does not seem to be well-founded as the Royal 
 Academician Hughes, who visited Agra about the 
 year 1782, has left behind him a record of his 
 travels, which says unmistakably that the minarets 
 had disappeared prior to that period. 
 
 The history of Agra from the year 1805 when 
 it had ceased to be the scene of hostilities to the 
 year 1857 when the province of which Agra was 
 
35 
 
 the central place was swept by a calamity unpre- 
 cedented in the annals of the empire, is a history 
 of peace and progress full of the records of those 
 measures that re-established order, and re-introduc- 
 ed the blessings of civilization. The district of 
 Agra attained its present size by the addition of 
 the tahsii of Bah-Panahat from Etawah in 1805, 
 and was placed under a Collector. The head-quar- 
 ters of the Government for the ceded and conquered 
 provinces were at Furruckabad where was estab- 
 lished a Board of Commissioners to which the 
 collectorate of Agra was subordinate. In 1808 
 the Commissioners sitting at Furruckabad recom- 
 mended the creation of a Lieutenant-Governorship 
 of the North-Western Provinces with Agra as the 
 chief town. The recommendation was not carried 
 into effect until it was strongly supported by the 
 Finance Commission that sat in 1829. The renewed 
 Charter of the East India Company in 1833 gave the 
 opportunity for the creation of the first Lieutenant- 
 Governorship in India, that of Agra. The record 
 from 1805 to 1833 is diversified by the records of 
 famines and scarcities in 1813-14, 1819, 1825-6 
 and by the gradual demolition of the beautiful 
 palace of Shish Mahal by the Marquis of Hastings 
 and by Lord William Bentinck who dug out the 
 precious marble and had them sent either to Eng- 
 land or disposed of by public auction. We shall 
 
36 
 
 not detail here the measures adopted by the Revenue 
 administrators, in respect of that most important 
 element of Indian administration the land. Sir 
 John Kaye has devoted a splendid chapter in the 
 first volume of his History of the Sepoy War to 
 demonstrate the changes that were introduced, 
 changes that were foreign to the habits and customs 
 
 o o 
 
 of the people and the spirit in which they were 
 received. The district of Agra like most other 
 Indian districts of note furnishes most interesting 
 themes for study, but we would not touch upon those 
 which do not immediately concern the traveller. 
 The first Lieutenant-Governor of Agra was Charles 
 Metcalfe, that noble Lord who has earned for himself 
 a lasting place in the affections of the Indian people 
 by conferring upon them almost unsolicited the 
 inestimable privilege of a free press. No sooner 
 had Sir Charles Metcalfe come to Agra to take 
 charge of the satrapy than he was called upon to act 
 as provisional Governor-General during the interreg- 
 num caused by the departure of Lord William 
 Bentinck. On Lord Auckland's arrival, Charles 
 Metcalfe reverted to the Lieutenant-Governorship of 
 Agra, the city that remained the capital of the North- 
 West for a period of thirty -two years. Readers of 
 the delightful letters of Lord Auckland's sister 
 which have won for themselves a deserved popularity 
 would remember that many of these letters were 
 
37 
 
 written from Agra, they being written during that 
 period when Lord Auckland was at Agra to take 
 measures against a famine of unprecedented viru- 
 lence. This was in the year 1838, when the whole 
 of the North-Western Provinces and the Panjab 
 were afflicted with a famine of such magnitude 
 that it carried off many millions as its victims. 
 It was in that year that the Christian missionaries 
 established the Secundra Orphanage to take charge 
 of the many orphan children who were abandoned 
 by their parents in the extremes of hunger. It was 
 in that year too that the Cautley Ganges Canal took 
 its rise as a famine relief work from that delightful 
 sacred place, Hurdwar, to spread plenty and fertility 
 in many a thirsty region. During the next reign, 
 that of Lord Ellenborough, Agra was rather pro- 
 minently mentioned in the Houses of Parliament 
 as the repository of what the Governor-General 
 called the Sornnath gates. Those having an 
 acquaintance with political literature would be able 
 to associate the mention of the Somnath gates with 
 the celebrated speeches of Lord Macaulay and other 
 first-rate orators on the subject. The proclamation 
 in which Lord Ellenborough pompously declared 
 that the Somnath Gates had been triumphantly 
 brought back to the classic land of India, was al- 
 leged to have been couched in the language of the 
 Jacobins of the French Revolution and provoked 
 
38 
 
 indignation from one corner of India to the other. 
 It seemed to have paved the way for his ultimate 
 recall. We shall have our say about the gates 
 themselves later on, when we come to speak of the 
 palaces in the fort where they are to be found. 
 We pass on next to the stirring scenes of the 
 Mutiny. We need not advert at any length to 
 the causes immediate and remote of that portentious 
 crisis. Suffice it to say that the immediate cause 
 was a false alarm that the sepoys of the Bengal 
 army entertained with reference to their religious 
 faith. It was commonly believed that the new 
 cartridges that had been supplied to the sepoys 
 contained materials that would pollute both the 
 Hindus and the Mussulmans, and as these were or- 
 dered to be used by biting off the end, their 
 suspicions in this respect were all the more con- 
 firmed. The Bengal sepoy had been true to his 
 salt daring a century of British rule. He had 
 followed his masters through every part of the 
 country, and planted British flag in the most re- 
 mote regions. He had given proofs of courage 
 and endurance of no common order. He had 
 subscribed liberally out of his slender earnings for 
 the relief of the sufferings of his European com- 
 rade in arms. He had been docile and submissive, 
 a lamb at home and a lion in the field. He had, it 
 is true, been prone to some occasional aberrations, 
 
39 
 
 but he had confidence in his officers and had always 
 been amenable to reason. But about the end of 
 1856 there occurred several circumstances which 
 for a time shook his faith in British integrity. The 
 long series of annexations that signalized the 
 administration of the Marquis of Dalhousie, the mea- 
 sures for the assessment of the land revenue which 
 for a time swept away the landed aristocracy of the 
 North- Western Provinces and Oudh, the intrigues 
 of designing men, who harboured the most trea- 
 sonable intentions against the Company's govern- 
 ment, produced a mass of discontent of which the 
 European rulers of the country could hardly perceive 
 the magnitude. Some outward disaffection which had 
 been shown by some sepoy regiments was crushed 
 out by timely vigour, but it is now believed by the 
 best authorities that there was a widespread con- 
 spiracy among the various branches of the Bengal 
 army, that Sunday the 31st May would be the day 
 for a general rising throughout Upper India, and the 
 hour to be selected would be that when the European 
 residents would be engaged in church service. A 
 peculiar circumstance precipitated the outbreak at 
 Meerut. It happened that General Hewitt, the officer 
 commanding the division, had sentenced 85 of the 
 bravest troopers to be imprisoned rigorously for 
 the period of ten years for refusing to carry out his 
 mandates with reference to what they thought to be 
 
40 
 
 foil n ted cartridges. In a solemn parade, these 85 
 soldiers, many of whom had been noted for their 
 gallantry in many a hard-fought field, were stripped 
 of their uniforms and condemned as common felons. 
 The scene took place amidst the muster of ^the large 
 European force of the station, and with the heavy 
 artillery in view of the parade-ground ready to 
 avenge, then and there, the slightest manifestations 
 of an insubordinate spirit. The native sepoys 
 calmly witnessed the disgrace of their comrades 
 and returned to , their quarters in a sullen mood. 
 It happened that many of the native sepoys of Meerut 
 were taunted by the syren voice of female inspira- 
 tion with being cowards who could not move a fin- 
 ger to avenge the disgrace of their brothers in 
 arms, w r ho were described as having been martyrs 
 to their religious scruples. The 10th May saw 
 the outburst of the long pent-up fury of the Meerut 
 troopers. The hour selected for the outbreak was 
 that when the Europeans were attending church 
 service, and soon the thatches of many bunga- 
 lows in the Meerut cantonments were lighting up 
 the evening sky with the lurid glare of incendiary 
 fire and the European officers and residents with 
 their families were being despatched to a swift end. 
 Many have been the stories of the heroic sufferings 
 of brave English men and w r omen on that eventful 
 night. But the strangest thing at Meerut was the 
 
41 
 
 fatal inaction of the large body of the European 
 force. The mutineers, having let loose the scum 
 of the bazaars and the freebooters of the neigh- 
 bouring robber tribes on that devoted city, took the 
 road to Delhi, and reached there the next day to 
 proclaim the rule of the representative of the dynasty 
 of the great Mogul, who was still enjoying the last 
 vestiges of royal prerogative and emoluments with- 
 in the confines of his old palace. Half a century 
 before Colonel Gillespie with a couple of galloper 
 guns and a handful of soldiers had crushed out the 
 Vellore mutiny, and if the old general and young 
 officers of the Meerut force had taken the same 
 prompt action, it is probable that the crisis would 
 have been averted. But the European military ele- 
 ment in the Meerut cantonments was engaged only 
 in keeping order within the cantonment boundary, 
 and did not think about the fates of other stations 
 or of the large political questions involved in their 
 conduct. The Agra Presidency in 1857 comprized 
 the district of Delhi, and from Meerut which was 
 one of its subordinate collectorates the news was 
 flashed to Agra, that there had been a mutiny at 
 that station. It was from Agra that the news of: 
 this great crisis was communicated to Lord Can- 
 ning who received it with the utmost composure, 
 and at once proceeded to concert measures for Hie 
 safety of the empire. The ruling Lieutenant- 
 
42 
 
 Governnor of Agra, writes Sir Jolin Kaye, tlie eminent 
 historian of the Sepoy revolt, "was John Russell 
 Colvin, an officer who stood high in public estima- 
 tion as one of the ablest civilians of the country, but 
 was held to be, though clever, a rather unsound and 
 erratic statesman. He was conscientious, pains- 
 taking, courteous, and amiable, but he wanted that 
 iron firmness, that rare self-confidence, which en- 
 ables a man to impress his will upon others." The 
 Commissioner of Agra was Mr. ( afterwards Sir) 
 George Harvey, the Magistrate-Collector was the 
 "Hon'ble Robert Drummond. Among other leading 
 civil officers present at head -quarters were Mr. E. 
 A. Reade (C.B.), (Sir) then Mr. H. B. Harrington, 
 Mr. C. Raikes (C.S.I.) the author of the notes of 
 the revolt, and William Muir who afterwards rose to 
 be an accomplished scholar of European reputation, 
 and the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western 
 Provinces. As Sir John Kaye writes, " Never per- 
 haps was the Bengal Civil Service great as it is 
 history represented on one spot by men of greater 
 energy and intelligence." To Agra as the head- 
 quarters of the N.-W. P. Government was brought 
 tidings of disaster from one station after another. 
 The authorities at Agra heard the same tragedy 
 of indiscriminate slaughter of the Europeans, the 
 breaking open of the jail, the plunder of the 
 treasury, and heroic sufferings and more heroic 
 
43 
 
 escapes by Englishmen and delicate English ladies? 
 with children in their arms. Mr. Colvin wrote im- 
 ploringly for the aid of the European soldiers, for 
 the protection of the small colonies of Englishmen 
 in the remote stations of Upper India ; and Lord 
 Canning, who had heen placed in a very critical 
 position by the withdrawal of the European troops 
 from India in large numbers just before the days of< 
 the mutiny, could not respond to these appeals. 
 When from Cawnpur and Farrukhabad arrived these- 
 doleful tidings, which form one of the darkest pages 
 of the history of the mutiny, Colonel Riddell, Cap- 
 tain D'oyley, Colonel Hugh Eraser, C.B., Captain 
 Norman Macleod, and the General commanding the 
 division, Brigadier-General Polwhele, were sum- 
 moned to have a consultation with the civil offi- 
 cers on the then situation at the Government House, 
 and it was determined that all the Christian fami- 
 lies should be removed into the Fort. Colvin tried 
 to restore confidence in the native troops by a 
 spirited speech on May 15th, and despatched Com- 
 missioner Harvey to request military aid from the 
 neighbouring native chiefs Gwalior, Dholpur, Jey- 
 pur, and Bhartpur. All the native chiefs promptly, 
 responded to the call, and Maharaja Scindia acting 
 under the inspiration of his able minister^ Sir Dinker 
 Rao, showed his conspicuous loyalty to the British 
 Government by detaching even his own body-guard. 
 
44 
 
 A volunteer corps wnR raised at Agra in which 
 every European and many Eurasian residents of 
 Agra enlisted. The news of the mutiny at Aligarh 
 was brought in by Lady Outram who was stopping 
 at that station with her son while her brave hus- 
 band was commanding the expedition to the Per* 
 sial Gulf, The native troops at Mainpuri also cast 
 off their allegiance, and it w r as now thought neces- 
 sary to provision the Agra Fort for a period of six 
 months, and to garrison it with 3,000 Europeans 
 and 1,500 natives, In connection with the vie* 
 tualling of the Fort Sir John Kaye and Colonel 
 Malleson prominently mention the services of Joti 
 Frasad Khatri, a grand army contractor, who left 
 behind him a large landed estate destined unfor-* 
 
 r> 
 
 Innately shortly after his death to pass into other 
 hands, Mr. Kaikes selected some buildings that 
 might serve conveniently to check the advance of 
 the mutineers, and Mr. Drummond converted the 
 city police into a defensive force. On the 25th 
 May, Colvin issued a proclamation to the native 
 army, which was not approved of by Viscount 
 Canning who immediately superseded it with his 
 own draft which ran as follows : > 
 
 " Every soldier of a regiment which although 
 it had deserted its post has not committed out- 
 rages will receive a free pardon and permission to 
 proceed to his home if he immediately delivers up 
 
45 
 
 his arms to the civil or military authority, nnd if 
 no heinous crime is shown to have been perpetrat- 
 ed by him personally. This offer of free and un- 
 conditional pardon must not be extended to those 
 regiments which have killed or wounded their 
 officers or other persons, or which have been con- 
 cerned in the cruel outrages. The men of such 
 regiments must submit themselves unconditionally 
 to this justice and authority of the Government of 
 India. Any proclamation offering pardon to sol- 
 diers, engaged in the late disturbances, which may 
 have been issued by local authorities previously 
 to this promulgation, will therefore cease to have 
 effect. But all persons who may have availed them- 
 selves of the offer made in> such proclamations 
 shall enjoy the benefit thereof." 
 
 The main difference between the proclamations 
 of Mr. Colvin and Lord Canning was that while the 
 former only exempted individuals from punishment 
 the latter exempted whole regiments known to be 
 concerned in such outrages from pardon. The 
 Lieutenant-Governor received on the 30th May the 
 news of the mutiny at Muttra, and on the morning 
 of the 31st measures were concerted to disarm the 
 native regiments at Agra. When the British In- 
 fantry and the British Artillery had been placed in 
 position, the native sepoys were ordered to pile 
 arms. They found that with a moment of hesitation 
 
46 
 
 or doubt there would come upon them the deadly 
 fire of the musketry and the artillery, and they ins- 
 tantly obeyed. The arms were laid down in a pile, 
 the uniforms were taken away, and the 44th and 
 67th regiments of native infantry which had done 
 good service in all parts of the empire were effaced 
 from the Bengal Army List. But as the hot month, 
 of June drew near to its end the tidings of disaster 
 thickened from all sides. The mutiny at Neemuch 
 on the 3rd of June was followed by the outbreak of 
 Jhansi on the 6th, of Nowgong on the 10th, of 
 Gwalior on the 14th, and Indore on the 1st, and as 
 the cheering news of succours from Calcutta did not 
 arrive till some months after, the Lieutenant-Govern- 
 or was reduced to the utmost straits to find the 
 necessary means to withstand this great outburst.; 
 There was no doubt that the thought of taking Delhi, 
 which measure would have broken the neck of the, 
 revolt, was uppermost in the minds of the Lieutenant 
 Governor, and though his anxieties in this respect 
 were shared by that noble band of workers in the 
 Pan jab who had acted with such conspicuous tact 
 and judgment in England's supreme hour of need, 
 Colvin never failed to recognize that it was on him, 
 as the chief ruler of Delhi that the primary respon- 
 sibility lay. The Lieutenant-Governor, as Sir John 
 Kaye remarks, " bore up bravely though the silent 
 approaches of death were already casting 1 their dark 
 
47 
 
 shadows over him." It was time now that active 
 measures should be taken for the defense of the 
 Agra district itself. Bodies of foot and horse were 
 posted at Jagner, Khairagarh, Shamsabad, to keep 
 order in the district, and the landholders who 
 used to keep an armed force as retainers were in- 
 duced to join the regular force on the event of an 
 armed resistance by either the mutineers marching 
 into this district or the lawless characters making 
 any disturbances. The mutineers who had revolted 
 in Gwalior could not come to Agra owing to the 
 impetuous torrents of the Chambal intervening bet- 
 ween Agra and Gwalior, but those who had raised up 
 the standard of revolt at Neemuch, marched into 
 Agra. Early in July the mutineers who came in 
 from Nasirabad and Neemuch made preparations to 
 attack the garrison of the Agra Fort. They advanced 
 by way of Fatehpur Sikri, and the scouts who had 
 been sent to reconnoitre the position of the enemy 
 came back and reported that they had pitched their 
 camp within a distance of 15 miles from Agra. 
 Some 600 men were made to come towards Shah- 
 ganj, a suburb of the city at some distance from 
 Agra, and one Salf-ul-lah made himself prominent 
 by taking an active part in these struggles. The 
 4th of July saw r the mutiny of the Kota contingent. 
 ,0n the 5th news was received that the Neemuch 
 .mutineers were advancing towards Shahganj, and 
 
48 
 
 Brigadier Polwliele moved out to attack their camp. 
 The rebel troops are estimated by Colonel Miilleson 
 at 4,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry and 11 guns. At 
 about 2 P.M. both sides opened their artillery fire, and 
 the rebel guns being placed in very advantageous 
 positions took the British force at a disadvantage, 
 and inflicted mortal wounds on several of them. 
 Meanwhile by some mismanagement, the British 
 guns had become unserviceable, and were more of 
 the nature of impediments than any tiling else. The 
 infantry regiment (the 3rd Europeans) was ordered 
 to charge, and by all accounts they succeeded in 
 occupying the village against immense odds. But 
 they could not long hold their own against the vast 
 mass of the advancing mutineers, who were all post- 
 ed on positions of vantage. The European cavalry 
 whose ranks had been swelled by a large contingent 
 of Volunteers were keeping up a sharp struggle 
 around the disabled guns which the rebel cavalry 
 was attemping to capture. Those responsible for the 
 safety of the European force found that a great mis- 
 take had been committed in attempting to assume 
 the offensive, and a general retreat was resolved 
 upon. The retreat was harrassed by the now vic- 
 torious mutineers to some distance, but they did not 
 follow up their success by a general attack on the 
 fort, and took the road to Delhi that very night. 
 The city budmashes taking advantage of the general 
 
49 
 
 anarchy that followed the defeat of the European 
 force attempted to create some disturbance, and 
 many European houses and public offices were 
 burnt and destroyed. About twenty five European 
 lives were lost, and the confusion in the city was 
 extreme. Within the Fort there were about 6,000 
 people. They were a heterogenous mass, and Mr. 
 Raikes thus writes of them; " There were unwilling 
 delegates from many parts of Europe and America. 
 Nuns from the banks of the Garonne and the Loire, 
 priests from Sicily and Rome, missionaries from Ohio 
 and Basle, mixed with the rope-dancers from Paris 
 and pedlars from America. Besides these we had 
 Calcutta Babus and Parsi merchants.' 7 On the 6th 
 the chief native police officer proclaimed the rule 
 of the Delhi emperor. The low Hindus and Mus- 
 sulmans kept up an indiscriminate plunder of all 
 Christian property. The confusion in the city 
 continued till the 8th when Munshi Rnja Ram, the 
 Tahsildar of Khandauli, informed Mr. Harington * 
 that the mutineers had departed and the local 
 budmashes were keeping up a lively scene. The 
 European officers came out of the fort and were at 
 their appointed places. The city police aided by 
 
 * I have been able to collect a detailed account of this portion of t,he 
 history of the mutiny of Ayra from Munshi Raja Ram's son, Mumlii Jagan, 
 Prashad, the leader on the civil side of the Agra bar and the Yiee- chairman 
 of the Agra Municipality. 
 
 r,. 
 
50 
 
 the co-operation of the chief native residents was 
 soon able under the supervision of Mr. Phillips to 
 restore order, but it was only by armed expeditions 
 from Agra that peace could be restored through- 
 out the district. Kiraoli and Fatehpur Sikri re- 
 turned to the reign of peace and order on the 29th 
 and 30th July. Itimadpur and Firozabad were 
 pacified on August 10th by a company of volun- 
 teers under the Joint-Magistrate Mr. Lowe. A 
 band of mutineers from Central India threatened 
 Agra for a time, but Maharaja Scindia managed to 
 keep them engaged till September when they 
 were rendered harmless. The Lieutenant-Governor 
 who had been ailing for a Ion or time succumbed on 
 
 o o 
 
 September 9th, and was buried in the Fort in front 
 of the Dewani-Am. Colvin's measures had excited 
 great dissatisfaction among those who were imme- 
 diately around him, but taken on the whole there 
 is no doubt that the voice of history would confirm 
 the verdict of Sir John Kaye that he died in harness 
 " a true Christian hero, of whom the nation must 
 ever be proud. " Some fugitives from the fortress 
 of Delhi after the fall of that place advanced to- 
 wards Agra, and after a drawn fight ( October 10th) 
 of about an hour and a half in which the British 
 force was commanded by Colonel Greathed, the 
 mutineers were utterly routed, and they precipitately 
 fled. By the end of October when the detachment 
 
51 
 
 under Cotton had finally dislodged the rebel fugi- 
 tives from Fatehpur Sikri, peace was completely 
 re-established in this district. Desperate characters 
 however occasionally made depredations till Sir 
 Hugh Rose in June, 1858, cleared Central India 
 of all rebels, and adequately punished those who 
 had been found acting disloyally during the late, 
 disturbances. The year 1861 witnessed a famine 
 in the district, the sufferings from which were miti- 
 gated by the timely assistance rendered by the Gov- 
 ernment and by private charity. In 1867 there 
 was an industrial exhibition held at Agra of the 
 manufactures and natural products of the sur- 
 rounding area which was very largely visited. 
 In 1868 the head-quarters of the N.-W. P. 
 Government was removed to Allahabad, and the 
 High Court after lingering on there for another 
 year commenced its sittings at Allahabad on 
 the 5th May, 1869. Agra dwindled down to the 
 position of a mere provincial town, and its pros- 
 perity gradually declined. Since the mutiny too 
 Agra has been the scene of several events that 
 have found a record in the pages of history. It 
 was at Agra that Lord Canning met the loyal 
 chiefs of Gwalior and Jeypur, and after spirited 
 addresses to them in his elegant English and mnjes- 
 tic voice, announced to them those rewards for 
 their adherence to the British cause in the hour 
 
52 
 
 of its trial that had been bestowed by the grate- 
 ful sovereign of a grateful nation. It was at Agra 
 that Lord Elgin held the last durbar of his ad- 
 ministration giving to the nobility and gentry of 
 Agra and the surrounding country an eagerly sought 
 for opportunity to display their shawls and brocades, 
 and it was from Agra that he set out on that 
 journey to the lovely valleys of the Himalayan 
 regions from which alas ! he was not destined to 
 return. It was at Agra that Lord Lawrence in- 
 vited in 1866 the privileged classes to meet him 
 in durbar, and, for the first time for a Viceroy of 
 India, addressed them in the native tongue recall- 
 ing to their mind those hours when British rule 
 was in its trial, w r hen the noble band of officers of 
 whom he was the acknowledged chief fought glo- 
 riously in their country's cause, and asked their 
 attention towards those works of peace, progress, 
 and enlightenment which constituted the chief glory 
 of British administration. The Duke of Edinburgh 
 visited the city in 1870, and received a most loyal 
 and enthusiastic reception from the people of Agra 
 and its neighbourhood. In the year 1873 the 
 Supreme Legislative Council had a sitting at Agra 
 to pass the rent and revenue laws which had been 
 shaped after passing through the controversy of 
 years, and which to the official mind settled satis- 
 factorily the tangled and many-sided questions 
 
53 
 
 between the tenant and the landlord, and between the 
 latter and the State. His Royal Highness the 
 Prince of Wales was a visitor to Agra in 1876, and 
 Agra could give him such a reception that it taxed 
 the best abilities of the host of special correspondents 
 who accompanied the illustrious guest, adequately 
 to describe it. There were present in Akbar's 
 historical hall the great chiefs of Hindustan, the 
 representatives of the rank, the wealth and the 
 intellect of a large area around to bow in solemn 
 obescience to the representative of the noblest and 
 widest empire the world has ever seen, who in the 
 natural order of things would be our future ruler. 
 I have in the second part of my book, Indian 
 History of Our Own Times, discussed at length the 
 scenic and the political significance of the visit 
 of His Royal Highness, and I do not think it pro- 
 per to reproduce those remarks in a book like this. 
 But the endless festivities that marked his Royal 
 Highness' stay, the brilliant illuminations, the Civil 
 Service Ball organized by Sir John Strachey, which 
 is said to have been the best given in honor of 
 the occasion anywhere in India, the solemn public 
 ceremonials impressed the inhabitants of Agra and 
 the numerous visitors who graced it with their 
 presence, with a sense of the depth of British prow- 
 ess, and a feeling of admiration for the culture 
 and the civilization of the west. When Lord Lytton 
 
54 
 
 proclaimed Her Gracious Majesty as the Empress 
 of Hindustan on the 1st January, 1877, his Lord- 
 ship gave Delhi the place of honor as the place 
 most associated in the minds and imaginations of 
 the people with the idea of universal sovereignty. 
 In 1877-78, the famine made its appearance in this 
 district, and although those disastrous years have 
 since been followed by many prosperous seasons, 
 their effect on the agricultural classes has not been 
 wholly obliterated. In 1882 during the regime of 
 Lord Ilipon and at the instance of Sir Alfred Lyall, 
 the Agra Government College was made over to 
 a board of trustees for private management as a 
 practical realization of that policy dimly foreseen 
 by that noble-minded statesman, Lord Halifax, in 
 the days of the educational charter of 1854, when 
 he declared that it would be the proudest day of 
 British rule in India, when the cultured classes 
 among the ruled would come forward and take 
 charge of the important duty of high education. 
 It was in reply to the municipal address of wel- 
 come at Agra that Lord Duiferin spoke those Tvell- 
 turned sentences which first told the Indian pub- 
 lic that they w r ere to expect an income-tax at no 
 distant date. Lord Lansdowne visited Agra in 
 1890, and held a durbar of the Commissionerships 
 of Meerut, Roh ilk hand and Agra at the splendid 
 tents put up for the purpose at the grand Parade on 
 
55 
 
 November 24th, and opened the water- works on 
 December 3. The city of Agra which had been 
 notorious for its brackish water from times of old 
 was provided from the beginning of 1891 with a 
 costly system of water-works AY Inch has made 
 draughts of pure water, an easily procurable luxury 
 in every part of the city. 
 
 We shall come to speak of the condition of Agra 
 as it is in another part of this book, but every one 
 would be filled with reflections of the vanity and 
 instability of human affairs as he sees the streets 
 and palaces of Agra, once the scene of great and 
 imposing state ceremonials, now devoted to the 
 ordinary occupations and frivolities of life. I have 
 often heard cultured travellers standing at the gate 
 of the Taj, muttering to themselves while their whole 
 being was rapt up with admiration at the first 
 sight of that scene of beauty that lay unfolded be- 
 fore them, that it seemed to them a place almost 
 'too hoary to enter.' I have fallen in with other 
 travellers, who while treading the palaces in the 
 fort, have conjured up those associations in their 
 minds that almost transported them to the age of 
 Akbar. Persons coming to Agra, with this venera- 
 tion for the past, would not be delighted to see the 
 places, consecrated by the panorama of great and 
 noble historic deeds, assigned to perform duties 
 of the commonest order. But in the economy of 
 
56 
 
 the administration of British India Agra is nothing 
 more than a district town ; its size, proportions and 
 manifold activities have come down to its present 
 requirements, and continued life in this city does not 
 come above the average of that monotonous muffasii 
 life in India which has been so often and so vividly 
 described by many gifted Anglo-Indian writers. 
 Agra has become of late years a large railway 
 centre, and its commercial prosperity seems to be 
 reviving. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE PRINCIPAL SIGHTS OF AGRA. 
 
 THE TAJ MAHAL, 
 
 No edifice of the civilized world has been oftener 
 or more elegantly described than the Taj Mahal of 
 Agra. Antiquarians, familiar with the architectural 
 monuments of the four quarters of the globe, and 
 art critics, saturated with the principles of the 
 Italian school, equally place it among the wonders 
 of the world, and are lavish in their admiration from 
 all standpoints. It has received visits for many 
 years past from the representatives of wealth, cul- 
 ture, and intellect of every country on the face 
 of the earth, and although human tastes always 
 differ, and the critical spirit is too visible in the 
 modern age, the Taj Mahal has been noticed with 
 enthusiastic admiration by all. Even those who had 
 attempted to point out any defects, have done so 
 in the utmost good spirit, and with preparatory 
 remarks about the imperfections of humanity 
 which ought to be overlooked in such a structure 
 as the Taj. The Taj Mahal is the highest work 
 of art of the Saracenic style. This style of 
 architecture which owes its origin and conception 
 
 H. 
 
58 
 
 to the followers of the Arabian Prophet, has left 
 many monuments of the past age both in Asia 
 and Europe. In the extreme west of the Islamic 
 domains, it is found exemplified in many a relic 
 of the past in the cities of mediaeval Spain. In 
 Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia, and in the 
 Khanates and principalities of Central Asia, this 
 style is amply illustrated. Ruskin has through many 
 delightful volumes treated architecture as one of the 
 fine arts, and attempted to show how the feelings 
 of the mind are expressively given \ 7 ent to in beauti- 
 ful structures. Many have been the discussions about 
 the mental conception which sought to find for it- 
 self a fitting expression in a mausoleum so beautiful 
 as the Taj Mahal. In describing the Taj Mahal it is 
 indeed difficult to make the proper selections from the 
 many admirable descriptions in hand. Civilian wri- 
 ters, like Sir John Strachey and Sir R,. Temple, 
 trained always to write solemn official paragraph in 
 the plainest English, have described it in polished and 
 trenchant sentences. Accomplished men of letters like 
 Bishop Heber and Sir Edwin Arnold, who see the 
 world with a gifted eye and who are endowed with 
 high powers of imagination, have enriched their des- 
 criptions of it by utmost richness of language, wealth 
 of conception, and plenitude of images. And practi- 
 cal and erudite scholars like Fergusson and Cunning- 
 ham, have seen and written about it with a critical 
 
59 
 
 eye, tracing how it originated, and how it was com- 
 pleted, and fixing its value as a historic relic and an 
 architectural monument. 
 
 The Taj is approached from the city of Agra by a 
 road which passes for the most part on the banks of 
 the Jumna and which was opened out among the 
 ruins of the villas and garden-houses of old days as a 
 part of the famine operations of 1838. From the 
 cantonments it is approached by a road which is 
 very wide in some of its parts and called the Taj 
 Road. On the way to the Taj from the city the 
 visitor would observe heaps of earth and decaying 
 bricks which tell the eloquent story of their being 
 formerly the sites of stately edifices. Many of 
 these have been dug out to their foundations, and 
 the materials used for modern public buildings. 
 The Taj is situated on a bend of the river Jumna, 
 and looks much nearer to the city side than it is. 
 It had been built during 18 years from 1630 to 
 1648. It was meant to be the final resting place 
 of his favorite sultana Mumtaz-i-Mahal by Emperor 
 Shah Jehan. This empress had as her maiden 
 name Arjumand Banu Begum. She was the daugh- 
 ter of Asaf Khan for some time prime minister to 
 Jehan gir and Shah Jehan. This Asaf Khan was 
 the brother of the celebrated empress Nur Jehan, 
 and owed his rise to the influence of his sister. 
 Asaf Khan's father was held in great respect by 
 
his imperial son-in-law, and he was raised to the 
 prime ministership soon after the celebrated marriage 
 with Nur Jehan. Asaf Khan succeeded his father on 
 the latter's death. His daughter, the lady of the 
 Taj, was married to Shah Jehan about the yearjjiii 
 and the marriage seems to have been a most happy 
 one. She showed her high-souled devotion to her 
 husband during the days when he was struggling 
 for the throne against numerous odds. She bore 
 her husband _seven children and died at Burhanpur 
 in the Deccan on the occasion of the eighth child- 
 birth. Shah Jehan was at the time conducting a 
 campaign in person against Khan Jehan Lodi, and 
 Mumtaz-i-Mahal had accompanied her husband thi- 
 ther. The memoirs of Shah Jehan tell us how un- 
 controllable was his grief on the loss of his beloved 
 wife, and how he resolved at once to perpetuate her 
 memory by a mausoleum that would be at once the 
 most artistic and the most enduring. The inscrip- 
 tions on the various parts of the building show that 
 it was commenced in the year 1630, the year in 
 which the empress died. The body of the empress 
 was brought embalmed to Agra, and laid in a place 
 close by the mosque on the west of the Taj Mahal 
 till the magnificent mausoleum was ready to give it 
 a fitting reception. 
 
 It has been said by a scholar of high authority 
 that the design and the estimates of the Taj were 
 
61 
 
 prepared by a Venetian, named Geronimo Yerroneo. 
 A Spanish monk, Father Manrique, who visited India 
 about the year 1641, makes the same statement, and 
 adds that the first estimate was for three crores of 
 rupees. The main work was left to Moslem archi- 
 tects and supervised by a Byzantine Turk. The 
 French artist, Austin de Bordeaux, w~n~b was in 
 Shah Jshan's service, and to whom scholars as- 
 cribe the best decorations of the Peacock Throne 
 and the ISTew Palace at Delhi, is said to be the 
 author of that exquisite inlaid work in marble 
 which is to be seen here in the highest perfection. 
 The marbles of which the Taj is built throughout 
 were brought from the most distant parts of the 
 empire, and in those days when the difficulties of 
 carriage were at least a hundred times as great as 
 they are now, this part of the business occupied 
 a very long time which according to one account 
 is stated to have been so much as seventeen } 7 ears. 
 But the substructure seems to have been commenced 
 in right earnest at once, and the inscriptions give 
 precisely the dates of the completion of the different 
 parts of the building. Those familiar W 7 ith Arab- 
 ic characters would be able to find out that 
 the western side of the Taj was completed in 
 A. H. 1046, corresponding with 1637 of the Chris- 
 tian era. The entrance gives A. H. 1048 as the 
 date of its completion ( A, D. 1639 ), and the outer 
 
62 
 
 gateway would give the year 1648. The mosque 
 on the western side necessitated another similar 
 building on the eastern side, and with that perfect 
 love of symmetry characteristic of the Islamic na- 
 ture, another such adjunct was added, which was 
 once the resting place of travellers and holy men. 
 The inscriptions are all in Arabic characters and 
 are taken mostly from the rigid sentences of the 
 Koran. Those who have been able to understand 
 the Arabic inscriptions record it as their opinion 
 that they are most appropriate and suggest 
 mournful reflections about the vanity of earth- 
 ly life and the eternal bliss of the life beyond 
 the grave. The inscriptions are very artistically 
 arranged, and it requires an effort of the mind to 
 understand that they are letters and not mere de- 
 corations. The best thing about them is that the 
 size of the letters has been so carefully chosen 
 that those on the greatest height appear to be 
 equal in shape and size to those on a level with 
 the eye of traveller, and this is considered to be 
 an artistic perfection of no common order. The 
 inscriptions on the front gateway are also in Arabic, 
 and it is said that they end with a feeling invita- 
 tion to all those who are pure in heart to enter 
 the garden of the Paradise. The inscriptions on the 
 tomb of the lady of the Taj give her maiden name, 
 the name that she assumed on her becoming 
 
63 
 
 empress, dates of her marriage and death, and many 
 epithets of praise such as are to he copiously found in 
 the florid style of the Persian writers.* Shah Jehan 
 is described on his tomb by every high-sounding 
 title that has the meaning of just, magnificent, and 
 besides one peculiar epithet Sahib-i-Quiran. This 
 last word means that he was born at a time when 
 there was a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and 
 Venus. The same epithet was one of the proudest 
 belongings of that rude Tartar chief whose inva- 
 sions struck terror equally in the fertile valleys of 
 Hindustan and the high uplands of Central Asia, 
 Timur the Lame or Tamerlane. Birth on sucfi 
 an auspicious moment was thought to bring in 
 good fortune with it. The word Quiran in the 
 most accepted dictionaries mean proximity or near- 
 
 * On the tomb of Mumtaz-i-Mahal is the following inscrip- 
 tion : Markad-i-Munawwar-i Arjumand Banu Begum Mukhatab 
 ba Mumtaz-i-Mahal taufiyat san 1040 ( the splendid resting- 
 place of Arjnmnnd Banu Beguni, entitled Mumtaz-i-Mahal, who 
 died 1040 Hijri). 
 
 On the tomb of Shah Jehan the following words are writ- 
 ten : Markhad-i-Mutahhar-i-Ali-i-Hazrat-i-firdous- Asbyani-e-sa- 
 hib-kiran-i-sani Shah Jehan badshahtaba simihut ( the sacred and 
 most sublime sepulchre of His Majesty, whose dwelling is in para- 
 dise, secondjof the lords of his dynasty, born in an auspicious and 
 falicitous moment, Shah Jehan King. May his grave be ever 
 fragrant! 1076 Hijri). 
 
64 
 
 ness, and is applied to mean the conjunction of 
 stars in heaven. The outer-gate and the two 
 similar structures on each side of the Taj are built 
 of red sandstone. This material seems to have 
 been quarried in this district itself and brought 
 from the hills near Fatehpur Sikri which is one of the 
 most extreme prolongations of the Vindhian range. 
 The white marble is found in India in the cele- 
 brated quarries of Jeypur and the well-known mar- 
 ble rocks of Jubbulpore through which the Nurbadda 
 cuts her way, thereby producing a scene of wild 
 beauty, that charms the visitor. The white marbles 
 of the Taj seem to have been brought mostly 
 from the Jeypur quarries. These are within the 
 boundaries of the Native State of Jeypur, w^hich. 
 was always a very friendly State to the Mogul 
 sovereigns and nearer to the place where they wer e 
 required. Those who have visited tho palaces and 
 cenotaphs of Jeypur will be able to find that the 
 materials employed in the handsomest buildings 
 there are exactly the same as those to be found 
 here. The various stones which have been em- 
 ployed in the inlay work of the Taj are agates, 
 cornelians, sapphires and other costly things brought 
 either from distant parts of India or from Afghan- 
 istan, Persia, and other countries. The work 
 is extant yet which gives the details of the ex- 
 penses of the Taj buildings. The figures as they 
 
65 
 
 have been ascertained by Western scholars say 
 that Rs. 98,55,426 came as contributions for this 
 purpose from the numerous feudatory Rajahs and 
 Nawabs. The cost to the imperial treasury which 
 was unusually full during Shah Jehan's reign, 
 amounted to Rs. 86,09,760. The silver gates of 
 the Taj which had been taken away and melted 
 down as booty by the Jats, had cost Rs. 1,27,000, 
 and it is said that these had 1,100 nails affixed to 
 them each having a head made of a Sonut rupee. 
 In a number of the Calcutta Review Captain Ander- 
 son gives a full estimate of the probable cost, and 
 thinks that the cost was Rs. 4,11,48,826. 
 
 The name of the chief architect of the Taj as 
 given in the native annals is jEffendi. The cost of 
 each particular necessary for the construction of 
 the buildings is given in copious detail. It is 
 hardly necessary to state here the economic truth, 
 that money has no intrinsic value of its own, that 
 everything depends on its purchasing power, and 
 as we have no sufficient data about this point, the 
 bare statement of the figures would convey but 
 little idea to the modern mind about the outlay 
 incurred. The wages that were paid to the work- 
 men employed are estimated at so much as thirty 
 lakhs, and there is no doubt that this amount was 
 paid either in cash or in allowances of grain. The 
 labour that was employed in building the Taj, 
 
66 
 
 was what is known as forced labour, and no per- 
 son had the choice or option to decline the service 
 required of him or the terms offered however in- 
 adequate they might seem in his own judgment. The 
 number of workmen is computed at twenty thou- 
 sand, and they had to labour for eighteen consecu- 
 tive years before this marble mountain raised its 
 head sublime in the air. The workmen used to 
 get every evening a stated allowance of corn and 
 other necessaries of life, but the allowance sanctioned 
 by the emperor was considerably cut short by 
 the officials supervising the construction, and the 
 labourers were ill-fed and ill provided for. They 
 were housed in the suburb of Tjijganj, and as they 
 were not at all cared for, pestilence and famine 
 made short work of a great many among them. 
 The mortality that is alleged to have prevailed 
 among them appears to have been somewhat dread- 
 ful, and as it is doubtful whether they ever got any 
 money allowances, they were always in a state of 
 chronic distress. 
 
 We need not follow learned scholars at any length 
 into the discussion as to whether the Taj Mahal 
 was the product of foreign brains or the unassisted 
 conception of oriental artists and architects. One 
 theory would place it among the conceptions of the 
 Italian artist, Manrique. But it is pointed out by 
 scholars of the highest authority that the Taj is 
 
67 
 
 anything but Italian in conception and execution. 
 It is a product, pure and simple, of the Saracenic 
 style of architecture, and it is entirely in accordance 
 with the Eastern ideas of the sublime and the beau- 
 tiful. The white muslin robe bedecked with jewels 
 was considered to be the proper imperial garb of the 
 great Mogul, and a structure of the purest white 
 colour seems to be in accordance with the most 
 finished ideas of oriental beauty. The Taj, it is 
 evident, has been modelled on the Tomb of Humayon 
 at Delhi, and the design is just the same, with evi- 
 dent improvements. A square garden W 7 ith gates 
 or appearance of the same on all sides, a terrace in, 
 the middle, and a garden-house at one end of it, 
 appear and re-appear in all the existing mausoleums. 
 There is no doubt that this was the groundwork 
 of the Taj too, with evident improvements. As 
 we proceed, however, with the eye of the architec- 
 tural scholar, to classify and criticise the different 
 productions of the Pa than and the Mogul art, we 
 find, as we come to later elates chronologically, (hat 
 many manifest improvements had been introduced 
 on the earlier designs and methods of execution. 
 The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and 
 petals that are to be found on all sides on the 
 surface of the marble evince a most delicate touch, 
 and show that a new element had been introduced 
 in the execution. The inlaid work, the marble 
 
68 
 
 screens, and the flowers, the bnds, the leaves, the 
 petals, and the lotus stems to be found in the Taj, are 
 almost without a rival in the whole of the civilized 
 world, not excepting that land of taste and culture } 
 that favoured home of art, the land of classic Rome. 
 There is no doubt, however, that Shah Jehan's 
 artists drew for their model, the Florentine work 
 known as Pietra Dura. There was a foreign artist 
 by name Austin de Bordeaux in Shah Jehan's ser- 
 vice, who seems to have had a complete knowledge 
 of the Italian art of the period and the work of 
 inlaying was modelled upon that to be found in the 
 Medicean Chapel of Florence. The work of inlaying 
 with stones and gems is found in the highest per- 
 fection in the Taj, and is altogether of a different 
 cast from that employed in earlier or later buildings. 
 The tomb of Iti-mad-ud-dowlah at Agra shows some 
 work of another sort, but there is wanting in that 
 the touch of genius, which makes the work of the 
 Taj so nearly akin to perfection. Austin de 
 Bordeaux is fixed upon by those scholars who have 
 carefully studied the subject as the person to whom 
 is due the artistic decorations of the Taj on the 
 surface of the white marble. His name is mentioned 
 both by Bernier and Tavernier, and to his genius 
 the palace built by his master in New Delhi, owes 
 the principal part of the artistic beauty which has 
 charmed the intellect and captivated the taste of 
 
.69 
 
 many a succeeding age. Austin died at Delhi, and 
 it is said that he was so favourite a servant of his 
 Imperial master, that his portrait in inlaid work 
 could be seen behind Shah Jehan's throne in the 
 palace in Delhi for many years till it was sacked and 
 despoiled by Nadir Shah. The whole of the Taj 
 produces a wonderful effect, that is equally sublime 
 and beautiful, as a view of it is obtained from the 
 outer gate whence it can be best seen in one view. 
 
 As to the effect produced on the cultured mind by 
 the Taj, and the points of beauty noticeable in this 
 marvellous structure, we would leave the reader to 
 peruse below the eloquent and elegant words of 
 many of its best critics, which should be reproduced 
 in full, one after another. 
 
 Sir William Wilson Hunter thus describes it : 
 (1.) The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes 
 * a dream of marble ' rises on the river bank. It is 
 reached from the Fort by the Strand Road, made 
 in the famine of 1838, and adorned with stone ghats 
 by native gentlemen. The Taj was erected as a 
 mausoleum for the remains of Arjumand Banu 
 Begum, wife of Emperor Shah Jehan and known as 
 Mumtazi Mahal or exalted one of the palace. She 
 died in 1629, and this building was set on foot 
 soon after her death, though not completed till 1648. 
 The materials are white marble from Jaipur and red 
 sandstone from Fatehpur Sikri, The complexity 
 
70 
 
 of its design and the delicate intricacy of the work- 
 manship baffle description. The mausoleum stands 
 on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners 
 rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful propor- 
 tions and exquisite beauty. Beyond the platform 
 stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a mos- 
 que of great architectural merit. In the centre of 
 the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square 
 of 186 feet with the angles deeply truncated so as 
 to form an unequal octagon. The main feature in 
 this central pile is the great dome, which swells up- 
 ward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers at 
 its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a 
 crescent. Beneath it an enclosure of marble trellis- 
 work surrounds the tombs of the princess and of 
 her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the 
 mausoleum is covered by a similar though much 
 smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced with 
 graceful Saracenic arches. "Light is admitted into the 
 interior through a double screen of pierced marble, 
 which tempers the glare of an Indian sky while its 
 whiteness prevents the mellow effect from degenerat- 
 ing into gloom. The internal decorations consist of 
 inlaid work in precious stones such as agate, jasper, 
 with which every squandril or salient point in the 
 architecture is richly fretted. Brown and violet 
 marble is also freely employed in wreaths, scrolls, 
 and lintels to relieve the monotony of white wall. 
 
71 
 
 In regard to color and design, the interior of the Taj 
 may rank first in the world for purely decorative 
 Workmanship ; while the perfect symmetry of its 
 exterior, once seen can never be forgotten, nor the 
 serial grace of its domes, rising like marble bubbles 
 into the clear sky. The Taj represents the most 
 highly elaborated stage of ornamentation reached by 
 the Indo-Mahomedan builders, the stage in which the 
 architect ends and the jeweller begins. In its magni- 
 ficent gateway the diagonal ornamentation at the 
 corners, which satisfied the designers of the gate- 
 ways of Itimad-ud-doulah and Sikandra mausoleums 
 is superseded by fine marble cables, in bold twists, 
 strong and handsome. The triangular insertions of 
 white marble and large flowers have in like manner 
 given place to fine inlaid work. Firm perpendicular 
 lines in black marble with well proportioned panels 
 of the same material are effectively used in the in- 
 terior of the gateway. On its top the Hindu brac- 
 kets and monolithic architraves of Sikandra are re- 
 placed by Moorish carped arches, usually single 
 blocks of red sandstone, in the Kiosks and pavilions 
 which adorn the roof. From the pillared pavilions 
 magnificent view is obtained in the Taj gardens 
 below, with the noble Jumna river at their farther 
 end, and the city and Fort of Agra in the distance. 
 From this beautiful and splendid gateway one passes 
 up a straight alley shaded by ever green trees cooled 
 
72 
 
 by a broad shallow piece of water running along the 
 middle of the path, to the Taj itself, f The Taj is 
 entirely of marble and gems. The red sandstone of 
 the other Mahomedan buildings has disappeared or 
 rather the red sandstone where used to form the 
 thickness of the walls, is in the Taj itself overlaid 
 completely with white marble, and the white marble 
 is itself inlaid with precious stones arranged in love- 
 ly patterns of flowers. A feeling of purity impresses 
 itself on the eye and the mind from the absence of 
 the coarser material which forms so invariable a 
 material in Agra architecture. The lower walls and 
 panels are covered with tulips, oleanders, and full 
 blown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble ; 
 and although the inlaid work of flowers done in 
 gems, is very brilliant when looked at closely there 
 is on the whole but little colour, and the all prevail- 
 ing sentiment is one of whiteness, silence, and calm. 
 The whiteness is broken only by the fine colour of 
 the inlaid gems, by lines in black marbles, and by 
 delicately written inscriptions also in black from 
 the Koran. Under the dome of the vast mauso- 
 leam a high and beautiful screen of open tracery 
 in white marble rises round the two tombs, or rather 
 cenotaphs of the emperor and his princess ; and in 
 this marvel of marble, the carving has advanced 
 from the old geometrical patterns to a trellis-work 
 of flowers and foliage, handled with great freedom 
 
73 
 
 and spirit. The two cenotaphs in the centre of the 
 exquisite enclosure have no carving except the plain 
 Kalamdan or oblong pen-box on the tomb of Em- 
 peror Shah Jehan. But both cenotaphs are inlaid 
 with flowers made of costly gems, and with the ever 
 graceful oleander scroll."^ 
 
 2. Bayard Taylor, after describing the details 
 about the Taj, goes on to say, " On both sides the 
 palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle 
 their foliage ; the song of birds meets your ears, and 
 the odour of roses and lemon flowers sweetens the 
 air. Down such a vista and over such a fore-ground 
 rises the Taj. There is no mystery, no sense o^ 
 partial failure about the Taj. A thing of perfect 
 beauty and of absolute finish, in every detail it might 
 pass for the work of genii who knew naught of the 
 weaknesses and ills with which mankind are beset. 
 It is not a great national temple erected by a free 
 and united people ; it owes its creation to the whim 
 of an absolute ruler who was free to squander the 
 resources of the State in commemorating his per- 
 sonal sorrows or his vanity." 
 
 3. A distinguished Russian artist, quoted 
 by Mr. Keene, says, that the Taj is a lovely woman, 
 abuse her as you please, but the moment you come 
 into her presence, you submit to its fascination. 
 On this Mr. Keene remarks, " Admitting that there 
 is something slight and effeminate in the general 
 
74 
 
 design which cannot be altogether obliterated or 
 atoned for by beauty of decoration, the simile seems 
 just, and it calls to mind the familiar couplet in the 
 Rape of the Lock 
 
 ' If to her share some female errors fall 
 Look in her face and you'll forget them all.* " 
 
 4. Mr. James Fergusson, D. c. L., F. R. s., 
 M. R. A. s., one of the highest living authorities 
 on Indian and Eastern Architecture, gives a descrip- 
 tion of the Taj, every word of which is valuable. 
 He says, " It is a pleasure to turn from this des- 
 troyed and desecrated palace to the Taj Mahal, 
 which ever more perhaps than the palace ( at Delhi ) 
 was always the chef-d'oevre of Shah Jehan's reign. 
 It too has been fortunate in attracting the notice of 
 the English who have paid sedulous attention to it 
 for sometime past and keep it now with its gardens 
 in a perfect state of substantial repair. iSTo building 
 in India has been so often drawn and photographed 
 as this or more frequently described, but with all 
 this it is almost impossible to convey an idea of it 
 to those who have not seen it, not only because of 
 its extreme delicacy and beauty of material em- 
 ployed in its construction, but from the complexity 
 of its design. If the Taj were only the tomb itself 
 it might be described ; but the platform on which 
 it stands with its tall minarets is a work of art it- 
 self. Beyond this are the two wings one of which 
 
75 
 
 is a mosque which anywhere else would be considered 
 an important building. This group of buildings 
 forms one side of a garden 880 feet square, and 
 beyond this again an outer court of the same 
 width, but only half the depth. This is entered by 
 three gateways of its own, and contains in the centre 
 of its inner wall the great gateway of the garden 
 Court, a worthy pendent to the Taj itself. Beauti- 
 ful as it is in itself the Taj would lose half its 
 charm if it stood alone. It is the combination of so 
 many beauties, and the perfect manner in which 
 each is subordinated to the other, that makes up a 
 whole which the world cannot match and which 
 never fails to impress even those who are most 
 indifferent to the effects produced by architectural 
 objects in general. The plan and section ( referring 
 to two wood cuts ) explain sufficiently the general 
 arrangement and structural peculiarities of the tornb 
 or principal building in the group. The raised 
 platform on which it stands is 18 ft. high, faced with 
 white marble, and exactly 313 ft. square. At each 
 corner of this terrace stands a minaret 133 ft. in 
 height and of the most exquisite proportions more 
 beautiful perhaps than any other in India. In the 
 centre of this marble platform stands the mausoleum, 
 a square of 186 ft. with the corners cut off to the 
 extent of 33 ft. 9 in. The centre of this is occupied 
 by the principal dome 38 ft. in diameter and 80 ft. 
 
76 
 
 in height, under which is an enclosure formed by a 
 screen of trellis- work of white marble a chefcFcevre 
 of elegance in Indian Art. Within this stand the 
 tombs that of Mumtae-i- Mahal in the centre, and 
 that of Shah Jehan on one side. These however as 
 is usual in Indian sepulchres are not the true tombs, 
 the bodies rest in a vault, level with the surface of 
 the ground beneath plainer tombstones, placed ex- 
 actly underneath those in the hall above. 
 
 In every angle of the building is a small domi- 
 cal apartment, of two storeys in height, 26 ft. 8 in. 
 in diameter, and these are connected as shown in 
 the plan by various passages and halls. *The light 
 in the central apartment is admitted only through 
 double screens of white marble trellis -work of the 
 most exquisite design one on the outer and one on 
 the inner face of the walls. In our climate this 
 would produce nearly complete darkness ; but in 
 India and in a building wholly composed of white 
 marble this was required to temper the glare that 
 otherwise would have been intolerable. As it is, 
 no words can express the chastened beauty of that 
 central chamber, seen in the soft gloom of the sub- 
 dued light that reaches it through the distant and 
 half-closed openings that surround it. When used 
 as a Bara Durrie or pleasure palace, it must always 
 have been the coolest and loveliest of garden retreats, 
 and now that it is sacred to the dead it is the most 
 
77 
 
 graceful and the most impressive of the sepulchres 
 of the world. The building too is an exquisite 
 example of that system of inlaying with precious 
 stones which became the great characteristic of the 
 style of the Moguls after the death of Akbar. All 
 the squandrils of the Taj, all the angles and more 
 important architectural details, are heightened by 
 being inlaid with precious stones, such as agates, 
 blood-stones, jaspers, and the like. These are com- 
 bined in wreaths, scrolls, and frets as exquisite in 
 design as beautiful in colour ; and relieved by the 
 pure white marble in which they are inlaid, they 
 form the most beautiful and precious style of orna- 
 ment ever adopted in architecture ; though of course 
 not to be compared with the intellectual beauty of 
 Greek ornament it certainly stands first among the 
 purely decorative forms of architectural design. 
 This mode of ornamentation is lavishly bestowed on 
 the tombs themselves and the screens that surround 
 them, though sparingly introduced on the mosque 
 that forms one wing of the Taj or on the fountains 
 and surrounding buildings. The judgment indeed 
 with which this style of ornament is apportioned to 
 the various parts is almost as remarkable as the 
 ornament itself, and conveys a high idea of the taste 
 and skill of the Indian architects of that age. The 
 long row of cypresses which line the marble paths 
 that intersect the garden at right angles, are 
 
78 
 
 now of venerable age ; and backed up by a mass 
 of evergreen foliage lend a charrn to the whole 
 which the founder and his children could have 
 hardly realized. Each of the main avenues among 
 these trees has a canal along its centre, studded with 
 marble fountains, and each vista leads to some 
 beautiful architectural object with the Jumna in 
 front and this garden with its fountains and gate- 
 ways behind. With its own purity of material and 
 grace of form, the Taj may challenge comparison 
 with any creation of the same sort in the world. 
 Its beauty may not be of the highest class, but in its 
 class it is unsurpassed. 
 
 5. Bernier after giving all the details omits to 
 mention the screen which according to the unanimous 
 testimony of modern scholars was added by Aurang- 
 zeb after he had laid the body of his father by the 
 side of Empress Mumtaz-i-Mahal. He thus describes 
 the effect that the Taj produced on him. " I had 
 reason to say that the tomb of the Taj Mahal is 
 something worthy to be admired. For my part I 
 do not yet well know whether I am not somewhat 
 infected still with Indianism, but I must needs say 
 that I believe it ought to be reckoned amongst the 
 wonders of the world rather than those unshaphen 
 masses of the Egyptian Pyramids, which I was 
 weary to see after I had seen them twice, and in 
 which I find nothing without but pieces of great 
 
79 
 
 stones ranged in the form of steps one after another, 
 and within but very little art and invention." 
 
 / 6/ Tavernier thus alludes to the Taj, "I 
 have seen the commencement and the completion of 
 this great work, which employed twenty -thousand 
 men daily for twenty-two years, a fact from which 
 some idea of its excessive costliness may be formed. 
 The scaffolding is held to have cost more than the 
 building, for not having enough wood they had to 
 make it of brick as also the centerings of the vaults. 
 Shah Jehan began to make his own sepulchre on 
 the other side of the river, but his war with his son 
 interrupted the design, and Aurangzeb, the present 
 ruler, has not cared to carry it out." The tradition 
 is that Shah Jehan's tomb was to have been built 
 on the opposite side of the river, and the two were 
 to be connected by a magnificent bridge. 
 
 7. A writer, who does not give his name, des- 
 cribes the Taj in the following choice sentences. 
 " The sethereal beauty which undoubtedly charac- 
 terizes the group as a whole is entirely due to 
 material and to colour. The materials and colours 
 are thoroughly adapted to the climate, and would 
 lose their effect in another atmosphere, or if backed 
 by dull leaden skies. To my mind the Taj is 
 utterly unstated for illumination. To crowd the silent 
 gardens with gaping chattering crowds, to deck the 
 great doorway and the mosque with rows of light 
 
80 
 
 till they resemble gin-palaces, to fling lime-light 
 upon the delicate masonry of the mausoleum, seems 
 to me an act of vandalism. Such things befit a 
 crystal palace where the whole surroundings are 
 rococo, flimsy, artificial, and theatrical, but they are 
 out of keeping with a building in which the dead 
 rest, and in which the stern simplicity of art is the 
 predominant feature. " * 
 
 The drawing of the topmost spire of the Taj 
 in front of the northern end of the Jawub or false 
 mosque to the east of the Taj, is an interesting thing. 
 It represents the gilded spike with a crescent at the 
 top crowning the central dome of the Taj to a 
 height of 30 ft. Another interesting phenomenon 
 is the power of resounding sounds of the central 
 dome of the Taj, ! There are many passages in 
 many a literature which celebrate this particular 
 power of echoing. It is to be enjoyed by sending 
 up single sounds and watching how they seem to 
 roll overhead for some time and then gradually fade 
 away by degrees. The reverberation of single and 
 distinct sounds or a single note carried on for some 
 time is so clear and emphatic that it is a distinctly 
 enjoyable phenomenon. It seems to float in the 
 air, and becoming tangibly less and less in gradually 
 
 * The visitor with leisure at his disposal is recommended to read the 
 beautiful descriptions of the Taj in prose and verse by Bishop Heber and Sir 
 Edwin Arnold, which are really charming but too long to be quoted here. 
 
81 
 
 fading undulations, appears to be swallowed up in 
 the blue vault of heaven. 
 
 The sight of the Taj by moonlight is charming. 
 In moon-lit nights, the whole building is seen from 
 a distance sparkling in the clear rays, all the curves 
 appearing beautifully, and the vegetation casting 
 soft shadows all around. The Indian sky is often 
 without a cloud, and in clear nights the blue vista of 
 the horizon affords the most delightful of canopies' 
 overhead as well as the most effective of back- 
 grounds, and the unpleasant glare of the Indian sun 
 being removed from the scene, the visitor enjoys the 
 prospect lying before him with all his heart. 
 The Taj, it has often been said, could be seen aright 
 like Mel rose by the pale moonlight, and the surround- 
 ing calm is unbroken by any thing but the whistling 
 breezes. The interior of the Taj could not be seen 
 to advantage in the moonlight, and rare have been 
 the occasions when the interior of the central dome 
 had been lit up with the splendour of a full moon. 
 The last occasion on which I saw it done was the 
 occasion of the visit of the late lamented H. R. H. 
 the Duke of Clarence to Agra. The outer decora- 
 tion on the marble walls of the Taj appear almost 
 transparent under the slanting rays of the moon, 
 and the pavement below, when looked at from the 
 terrace of the Taj, has all the appearance of a 
 carpet. There is A genius of the place which fully 
 
82 
 
 envelopes the visitor as he lightly treads "within it 
 under the bright moon a genius which can he as 
 inadequately described as it is visibly felt. The well- 
 known saying about the Taj, that it is too sacred to 
 the touch and that it only wants a glass-dome to 
 shelter it from the winds of heaven, and to render 
 it perfect, is never more fully realized than when one 
 looks on the lovely panorama of beauty with the 
 clear moon at its meridian height. 
 
THE FORT. 
 
 The Fort at Agra is the central object of the 
 city and a most imposing object in itself. It was 
 founded in its present form by Akbar, though both 
 the interior and the exterior underwent consider- 
 able modifications, and received several accessions 
 in the reign of his son and grandson. Its appear- 
 ance from the opposite bank of the river, the view 
 of massive sandstone walls crowned by gilded mar- 
 ble domes, is a most picturesque one, and charms the 
 traveller as he enters the city on the eastern side. 
 It has been described almost as often as the Taj, and 
 many an imaginative writer has attempted to des- 
 cribe in graphic and elegant language the life that 
 the Emperor of Hindustan led within this massive 
 structure. Travellers from the far west declare 
 that they have seen few things equal to the Fort at 
 Agra in massive grandeur or solemnity and beauty 
 of appearance. The Fort at Delhi has little of its 
 antique sublimity left. Entering the walls of the 
 Fort at Delhi one is disappointed to find the exceed- 
 ingly modern and ordinary structures which house 
 the British soldier. There is only one corner of ifc 
 that contains the relics of the magnificent Mogul 
 
84 
 
 Emperor who founded New Delhi. The Fort at 
 Agra 1ms not undergone the same vicissitudes as 
 the one at Delhi during the days of the Mutiny. 
 At Delhi, the Fort was the centre and rallying point 
 of the revolt of the mutinous troops all over Hindus- 
 tan. Since the eventful morning of the llth May, 
 1857, when the Meerut mutineers demanded and got 
 the entrance into the Fort, it had been the highest 
 ambition of the disappointed troops in all the great 
 military centres of Hindustan, to march with all the 
 money in the British treasuries to that imperial 
 residence, which still held a great place in the 
 imagination of the multitude, and to rally with their 
 heart's blood around the flag of the crescent set up 
 from the far-famed ramparts. It took several 
 months' strenuous fight for the British to reconquer 
 that citadel and in the first heat of re-occupying it, 
 the military authorities lost their heads and despoil- 
 ed within a few hours those priceless gems of archi- 
 tecture which would have instructed and delighted 
 many an unborn generation. But at Agra, the 
 Fort, although it has been modernized in several 
 particulars, is yet to all intents and purposes the 
 same as the one which Aurangzeb saw when he pro- 
 ceeded towards the Deccan to set up the flag of the 
 Mogul on the palaces of Bijapur and Golconda. 
 The Jats had despoiled it in some particulars, and 
 two British Viceroys had caused a considerable 
 
85 
 
 quantity of marble to be dug up and sold by public 
 auction or sent to England. But a very different 
 spirit pervaded the head quarters of the Government 
 of India afterwards. Their Royal Highnesses the 
 Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh, saw these 
 buildings with admiration. The British Govern- 
 ment not only determined to preserve what was left? 
 but attempted to restore many of these edifices at 
 considerable cost. The impression generally pre* 
 vails even among many cultured travellers that by 
 the process of attempted restoration, the buildings 
 have been substantially altered, but this does not 
 seem to have been the case. I have had the advan- 
 tage of consulting many of the local members of the 
 Committee that was appointed to consider this sub- 
 ject ; and I have carefully ascertained the condition 
 of the buildings before the repairs were undertaken. 
 All that was done was to strike out all modern 
 additions and bring the buildings to their former 
 condition, with only the necessary repairs and 
 patch-works. There is however nothing in the 
 Agra Fort that can compete with the chastened 
 beauty of the Diwan-i-Khas at Delhi which is truly 
 the paradise on earth, as its poetic inscription seems 
 to proclaim. 
 
 The Fort at Agra was built by Akbar after his 
 final abandonment of Fatehpur Sikri. Akbar built 
 his metropolis at Fatehpur Sikri, and the inagni- 
 
86 
 
 ficent ruins there which still meet the traveller's eye 
 manifest to posterity how far he had proceeded in 
 this direction. The place however, with its brackish 
 water, did not prove very healthy and the superi- 
 ority of Agra as a town on a river which in that age 
 was one of the broad highways of commerce was 
 soon demonstrated. The Fort at Agra was founded 
 originally by Shere Shah, and considerably improved 
 upon by Selim Shah Sur. This mud building Akbar 
 took as the foundation of his new palace-fortess 
 and with sandstone quarried from the hills at Fateh- 
 pur Sikri, he built the massive red building where 
 he used to reside with his court and imperial sur- 
 roundings. The outer walls are nearly a mile and 
 half in circumference, of red sandstone with bee- 
 hive crenellations. They are surmounted by towers 
 and bastions, and used to have a deep moat around 
 them. There were two surrounding walls, and 
 antiquarians say that the outer one was a later 
 addition by Shah Jehan. There used to be a 
 building known as Tirpolia or the three-gated building 
 between the Delhi Gate of the Fort and the Jahanara 
 Masjid where markets used to be held. But this build- 
 ing was swept away in 1875 for strategic reasons and 
 nothing now intervenes between the new railway 
 station and the Delhi Gate of the fort. There used to 
 be two other entrances besides the Delhi Gate to this 
 fort. One is that which is still known as Amar 
 
87 
 
 Singh Gate and which was named after a llajput 
 chief who was cut up in the durbar of Shah Jehan 
 iu 1644. The other one is the disused water-gate 
 to the east side of the Fort. Those familiar with 
 the engineering branch of the modern military 
 science say that the walls of the Fort are not really 
 of such strength as they seem. The red sandstone 
 is a mere veneer over banks of mud and rubble. 
 Modern artillery however has made but very slow 
 impression on mud and sandstone walls. The stu- 
 dent of the History of India of the present century 
 would call to mind as in point, the mud walls of the 
 Fort at Bharatpur which defied the heaviest siege, 
 train that Lord Cornbermere could bring against 
 them for many months and the stone-walls of Delhi 
 which, the British veterans could not dare to storm 
 even with heavy guns at their disposal, at a time 
 when the speedy possession of that imperial city was 
 being urged upon them by the highest political author- 
 ities as a thing of the greatest moment in England's 
 supreme hour of need and notwithstanding the 
 praiseworthy and self-sacrificing spirit of the young- 
 er ensigns and pioneers who offered to lead the 
 operations at all risks. It was only by mining 
 operations when portions of the walls had been 
 blown away that the turning-point of the siege 
 came, and with such experiences of the past, the re- 
 marks about the strength of the walls of the Agra 
 
88 
 
 Fort and their capacity to resist grape-shot and 24- 
 pounders seem to be rather lightly made. 
 
 The Delhi Gate of the Fort is a massive struc- 
 ture, reached by a drawbridge over the moat and 
 we then go up a sloping ascent paved with stone- 
 flags which terminate in the inner gateway known 
 as Hathi Pol or Elephant Gate flanked by red sand- 
 stone towers of an octagonal shape with inlaid de- 
 signs in white marble. Between the two towers are 
 two circular domes, which surmount the entrance 
 to the gateway. The inner gateway, tradition has 
 it, was erected in commemoration of Akbar's victory 
 at Chittore, over two Rajput chiefs who offered him 
 a stubborn resistance. This gate is defended by a 
 portcullis and a drawbridge and was erected to suit 
 strategic purposes, as well as for ornamental use. 
 The inscription over it is now too indistinct to be 
 deciphered, but scholars guess that it must have 
 had the same import as the one on the gate of 
 Fatehpur Sikri and was in commemoration of the 
 success of Akbar in the Chittore campaign There 
 is another inscription on this gateway which pro- 
 claims the fact and gives the date of Jehangir's 
 accession. Over these gates were once placed those 
 elephant statues which represented the Chittore 
 heroes Jairnal and Fatha and portions of which in 
 ruins might yet be seen in Delhi. The two statues 
 are described by all who saw them at the time to be 
 
89 
 
 fine works of art. Passing through it, the traveller 
 would be disappointed to walk through a road newly 
 opened out and alongside of some modern barracks 
 and arsenals. These are of no interest to detain 
 the traveller, and he might pass on at once to the 
 Moti Musjid or the Pearl Mosque. The three domes, 
 rising high up in the sky, which he would see from 
 a distance considerably above the ramparts, would 
 indicate the spot where this far-famed place of worship 
 is to be found. 
 
 The following passages taken from an eminent 
 writer comprize probably one of the best descrip- 
 tions of the celebrated Pearl Mosque. " Though 
 neither so magnificent nor so richly ornamented as 
 some of his other buildings, the Moti Musjid or 
 Pearl Mosque which Shah Jehan erected in the Fort 
 of Agra is one of the purest and most elegant build- 
 ings of its class to be found anywhere. It is not 
 large, measuring only 187 ft. by 234 ft. over all ex- 
 ternally, and though raised on a lofty stylobate, 
 which ought to give it dignity, it makes no preten- 
 sions to architectural effect on the outside ; but the 
 moment you enter by the eastern gateway the effect 
 of its court-yard is surpassingly beautiful. The 
 whole is of white marble, and the forms all graceful 
 and elegant. The only ornament introduced which 
 is not strictly architectural is an inscription in black 
 marble inlaid in the frieze of the mosque itself. The 
 
90 
 
 court-yard is nearly a square, 154 ft. by 158 ft. On 
 three sides it is surrounded by a low colonnade, 
 10 ft. 10 in. deep ; but on the west by the mosque 
 itself, 159 ft. by 56 ft. internally. It opens on the 
 court by seven arches of great beauty, and is sur- 
 mounted by three domes of bulbous form that be- 
 came universal about this time. Any woodcuts 
 cannot do it justice, it must be seen to be appre- 
 ciated ; but I hardly know anywhere of a building 
 so perfectly pure and elegant or one that forms such 
 a wonderful contrast with the buildings of Akbar in 
 the same palace." 
 
 The inscription over the front of the Moti Mus- 
 jid shows that it was built by Shah Jehan in A. H. 
 1063. Though not so large as the Jumma Musjid 
 of Delhi, nor adorned with tall minars, it possesses 
 more elegance and purity of effect than the great 
 mosque at Shah Jehan's imperial capital. Standing 
 in its court-yard one looks on nothing but white 
 marble slabs on all sides and the blue sky overhead, 
 and Sir Richard Temple truly remarks that no place 
 is more fitted to inspire men with deeper religious 
 culture than this spotless rnosque. It is much 
 larger than the mosque of the same name attached 
 to the palace at Delhi. It is entirely without decora- 
 tion, and is situated on a lofty platform raised by a 
 long flight of steps. European artists and travel- 
 lers have found in the Doric simplicity of its style 
 
91 
 
 its crowning ornament, and if the cathedral at Eome 
 or the cathedral at St. Paul's inspire spiritual 
 sentiments, much more is this building calculated 
 to do the same. It has been pronounced by many to 
 be the purest object yet dedicated by the vanity of 
 man to the worship of the Almighty Being above. 
 It has 24 Saracenic arches with beautiful curves, 
 and points of their intersection present a beautiful 
 sight. The two side-chambers and the main block 
 were used as a hospital during the mutiny. There 
 is a sun-dial and a beautiful tank to get water from 
 in the court-yard, and there are staircases on both 
 sides, joining it to the private apartments of the 
 palace. From its top, beside the domes, a fine view 
 can be obtained of the country around. 
 
 From the Mod Musjid the traveller passes on 
 to the Diwan-i-Am, or the Public Audience Hall, a 
 building completed in its present form by Aurangzeb. 
 The date of its completion is given as 1094 A. H. 
 being the 27th year of the reign of Alumgir. It had 
 undergone considerable modifications under the 
 direction of the English Government, but it has been 
 brought to its pristine condition, as far as possible, 
 during the Lieutenant-Governorship of Sir John Stra- 
 chey. Its dimensions are 192 ft. by 64 ft. and there 
 are pillars and colonnades to support the roof above. 
 It was here that the emperor appeared to the public 
 surrounded by courtiers paying him due respects 
 
92 
 
 and here all business of a public nature was tran- 
 sacted. The emperor's seat was on the raised plat- 
 form overlooking the hall on all sides of which 
 were walls inlaid with mosaics and precious stones. 
 Just below it is a slab of marble on which, as tradi- 
 tions says, Akbar used to take his stand while dis- 
 pensing justice. The court-yard in front of die 
 Diwan-i-Am which has small cells and cloisters on 
 three of its sides and which will be found stored 
 with guns, shots and shells of all descriptions was 
 the tilt-yard of Akbar' s palace where his guards 
 paraded, richly caparisoned horses and elephants 
 stood ready for the emperor, and numerous enter- 
 taining scenes were exhibited before the Sovereign. 
 There w r as an iron railing, now no longer to be seen, 
 separating this hall from the court-yard below, and 
 only persons of rank and distinction were admitted 
 inside the railings. This court-yard, whence issued 
 the most splendid processions during the reign 
 of Akbar and his immediate successors, is now 
 a fine lawn, where the guns wrested from the muti- 
 neers, are yet to be seen and where is the tomb of 
 John Russell Colvin, Lieutenant-Governor, North- 
 Western Provinces, during the time of the Mutiny 
 who died within this fort, ( September 9th, 1859). 
 This tomb has been built in a truly oriental fashion 
 with fine polished marble slabs and pillars, and is in 
 keeping with the surroundings of the place. It lias 
 
93 
 
 no inscriptions, but it would recall to posterity the 
 memory of faithful service rendered in England's 
 supreme hour of need. It has been remarked that the 
 Diwan-i-Am is much smaller than what would have 
 been suited to the dignity of the emperor of Hindus- 
 tan, and that it sinks into insignificance when com- 
 pared with Westminister Hall or the halls of Public 
 Audience at any one of the great European capitals. 
 There are grated passages to the right and left of the 
 emperor's throne whence the ladies of the palace could 
 view the proceedings of the court and the tilt-yard. 
 The durbar that was held in this hall in honor of His 
 Koyal Highness the Prince of Wales, where many of 
 the ruling chiefs and noblemen of India paid hom- 
 age to their future emperor, is described to be an 
 exceptionally brilliant affair, for a full and detailed 
 description of which the reader is referred to George 
 Wheeler's book on the tour of His Royal Highness. 
 The door to the back of the emperor's throne 
 admitted him to the Macchi Bhawan. It is a court- 
 yard to which the water of the Jumna was 
 admitted by artificial passages, and where fishes 
 used to the stored for the pleasure of the emperor 
 that he and his courtiers might indulge in the 
 amusement of angling. The Macchi Bhawan has 
 chambers which served for use as office rooms on 
 two of its sides, and on the north-west corner it leads 
 to a small inosque and set of chambers. It was 
 
94 
 
 here that Shah Jehan was placed in honourable 
 durance by his son, and the chamber is still pointed 
 out where he used to reside and whence he convers- 
 ed with his sympathisers below. This mosque is 
 the smaller Pearl Mosque, and is built just after the 
 fashion of the one in Delhi. It has three arches 
 and is built entirely of white marble without any 
 decorations, and is a most pleasing edifice. The 
 walls in front of this smaller mosque shows a large 
 opening where warm water was stored for the ablu- 
 tions necessary before prayer, and a door opens out 
 to a beautiful balcony, with a court-yard and side 
 chambers of red sandstone which was the market 
 for the ladies of the zenana where the precious and 
 fancy articles used in the imperial seraglio were 
 exhibited, bought, and sold. This little Mod 
 Mosque was added by Aurangzeb, and though very 
 pretty is very small, being 60 ft. square in all. 
 Travellers have often expressed wonder at the fact 
 that while Akbar should have built a splendid mos- 
 que at Fatehpur Sikri, he should have built none 
 at Agra, both the Mod Musjid and its smaller 
 counterpart being undoubtedly later additions. 
 
 The palace at Agra, as it is seen now, retains 
 very little of the original as built by Akbar, the 
 greater part of it being undoubtedly later additions 
 by Jehangir and Shah Jehan. Passing the sand- 
 stone pavement on the southern side of the Machhi 
 
95 
 
 Bhawan, the traveller would come on a broad ter- 
 race with the Diwan-i-Khas on the southern side of 
 it and t wo historic thrones on the eastern and 
 western sides almost near the middle. On this 
 terrace the emperor used to take his seat to enjoy 
 the river air, to see the royal yachts gliding past 
 in the Jumna immediately below, and to watch the 
 fights of animals in the lawn on which it looked. 
 There is a tradition that the fissure caused in the 
 black throne was a miraculous event, the stone 
 breaking as it could not suffer that Jawahir Singh, 
 son of Suraj Mall, the Jat Conqueror of Agra, 
 should take his seat on it as Emperor of 'Hindustan. 
 There are red stains in the throne, and this is said to 
 have been caused by blood issuing out of it when 
 Lord Ellenborough took his seat on it as Emperor of 
 Hindustan. The presence of the red marks is due 
 to mineral substances, and can be otherwise account- 
 ed for by mineralogists. There are two inscrip- 
 tions on this black throne, one mentioning the fact 
 ofJehangir's reconciliation with his father the Em- 
 peror Akbar, and the other the fact of his ascending 
 the throne of his father in 1605 A. D. The throne is 
 said to have been brought by Prince Selim from Al- 
 lahabad when he came to Agra to be reconciled with 
 his father after his open rebellion of many years. 
 
 The Diwan-i-Khas or the place where the em- 
 peror used to consult with his ministers, is much 
 
96 
 
 inferior to the building of the same name at Delhi, and 
 consists of two halls. Its entire length is 64 ft. 9 in. 
 and breadth 34 ft. The roof is placed 22 ft. higher 
 than the floor. It is very elaborately decorated, and 
 Tavernier tells us that it was Shah Jehan's intention 
 to put in this building a trellis of rubies and emer- 
 alds to resemble green grapes and those beginning 
 to turn red, but the design proved to be too costly, 
 and the inlaid work was carried on to a small extent. 
 This building is entirely of white marble. Its mar- 
 ble flooring had been dug out by the Jat invaders. 
 It is said too that its ceiling was to have been cover- 
 ed with a silver sheet. It was from this place that 
 Emperor Akbar elaborated those administrative mea- 
 sures which have struck posterity w r ith admiration 
 and which have been chronicled with such strict fide- 
 lity to details, by his friend Abul Fazal. This was 
 the central chamber, where converged the news of 
 Hindustan and whence issued mandates to be obeyed 
 in all quarters of the empire. It is a tasteful build- 
 ing, beautiful in itself, though it is usually consider- 
 ed inferior to the chaste, the elegant, and the magni- 
 ficent Diwan-i-Khas of Delhi. 
 
 Passing southward from the Diwan-i-Khas one 
 comes to the Pachisi Board where chess and other 
 oriental games used to be played by the ladies of the 
 imperial household. It is surmounted by the 
 Summon Burj, or the Jasmine Tower, and surrounded 
 
97 
 
 on two of its sides by beautiful screens in which the 
 marks of cannon balls are evident. The Jasmine 
 Tower was the appointed boudoir of the principal 
 Begum. It was here that she sat surrounded by 
 maids-of-honor, and amused herself while looking on 
 the bend of the river immediately below. The tower 
 is composed of carved and inlaid marble, with a foun- 
 tain beautifully laid out, and is an ideal of what a 
 bower of repose for a lady of the highest rank should 
 be in an eastern country. It was restored by order 
 of Lord Northbrook, and it appears now as it used 
 to do in Mogul times. 
 
 Near the Summon Bnrj is the disused water- 
 gate yet to be seen, and we pass on next to the Khas 
 Mehal w r hich forms the eastern surrounding of the 
 Anguri J3agh. The Khas Mahal is a chamber of 
 pure white marble, approached by marble steps, and 
 surrounded by marble walls of various thickness. 
 It was the sleeping room of the emperor. From its 
 windows Akbar used to view the splendid sight of 
 the Eastern sunrise. One can obtain a fine side-view 
 of the Taj from the same place. Its ceilings were 
 adorned with gold paintings. They were almost 
 exactly of the same description as those that adorn 
 the walls and ceilings of the Dewan-i-Khas at Delhi, 
 a style which seems to have found peculiar favour 
 with Shah Jehan. A small specimen of this paint- 
 ing had been restored during the visit of His Royal 
 
 M. 
 
98 
 
 Highness the Prince of Wales, and although it had 
 been done hardly over two square feet the cost is 
 said to have been nearly Ks. 5,000. The Khas 
 Mehal is strictly in the private apartments of the 
 palace, and is said to have been the drawing and sit- 
 ting room of the emperor's most favourite lady of 
 the harem. To the front of the Khas Mahal stretches 
 the Anguri Bagh with its delicious creepers and 
 shades, its fountains, its ever-perfumed breezes, and its 
 evergreen shrubs. The student of the literature of 
 the time of the Mogul emperors must be familiar 
 with this name which is associated with some of the 
 most charming and romantic of those tales which 
 ever lulled a baby to sleep in Hindustan. The 
 Anguri Bagh was surrounded by three sets of cham- 
 bers on three of its sides, all appropriated to the use 
 of the ladies of the zenana. It was to these cham- 
 bers that the Christian population of Agra flocked 
 during the troubles of 1857. The chambers here 
 are said to stand exactly as they were built by Ak- 
 bar, and had undergone only slight modifications at 
 the hands of Shah Jehan to suit the new surround- 
 ings called into being under his orders. The addi- 
 tions to the palace at Agra by Shah Jehan in white 
 marble has been thus described by an elegant writer. 
 " The substructures of the palace are of red sand- 
 stone, but nearly the whole of its corridors, chambers, 
 and pavilions, are of white marble, wrought with the 
 
99 
 
 most exquisite elaboration of ornament. The pavi- 
 lions overhanging the river are inlaid within and 
 without in the rich style of Florentine mosaic. They 
 are precious caskets of marble glittering all over with 
 jasper, agate, Cornelian bloodstone, lapislazuli, and 
 topped with golden domes. Balustrades of marble, 
 wrought in open patterns of such rich design that 
 they resemble fringes of lace when seen from below, 
 extend along the edge of the battlements. The 
 Jumna washes the walls seventy feet below, and 
 from the balconies, attached to the zenana or women's 
 apartments, there are beautitul views of the gardens 
 and palm groves on the opposite bank and that 
 wonder of India, the Taj, shining like a palace of 
 ivory and crystal, about a mile down the stream." 
 
 To the north of the Anguri Bagh a small pas- 
 sage leads to the Shish Mahal or palace of glass 
 which was the emperor's bath. Those who have 
 experiences of the Hammams of Delhi will be able 
 easily to appreciate what was the oriental idea of a 
 luxurious bath. The bath of Shah Jehan at Delhi is 
 of the purest white marble with the mosaic work of 
 the Taj from chamber to chamber. But the bath at 
 Agra is a curious structure in itself. It has two 
 chambers with large square cavities in the middle of 
 each of them where the emperor used to take his 
 bath. One of these chambers contained tepid water 
 and the other cold water. The walls are inlaid with 
 
100 
 
 thousands of small pieces of glass reflecting like mir- 
 rors, with silvery interlinings, and disposed after a 
 most picturesque and intricate design. On the 
 northern end of the wall are to be found places 
 where lamps used to be lit, and there is no doubt that 
 the chambers, known as the Shish Mahal with its 
 thousands of mirrors all over the wall and the ceiling, 
 can be seen to the best advantage when the building 
 is lighted up from within, and the lights are reflected 
 by the transparent substances all around. The 
 Mahomedan historian tells us how here the emperors 
 used to disport themselves in the water and the 
 marble floors w r ith their favourite sultanas. The 
 floor of these chambers were paved with marble flags 
 which had been unfortunately dug out when a diff- 
 erent spirit from the present prevailed with reference 
 to the monuments of ancient art at the head quarters 
 of the British Government. Between the Khas 
 Mahal and the Jehangiri Mahal to be just mentioned 
 there is a beautiful river-side pavilion which had a 
 gilded dome very attractive to the sight. Before the 
 room in which the Archaeological Society had its 
 museum, is approached, the visitor would see with- 
 in a railed enclosure two high and heavy gates 
 reputed as the Sornnath gates. The gates are not 
 of sandal wood as they are thought to be, but the 
 frame-work is of Himalayan cedar, and it has some 
 Cufic inscriptions, These are the gates which Lord 
 
101 
 
 Ellenborough caused to be brought from Cabnl with 
 General Pollock's force, and set np with such pomp 
 and splendour as the " restored gates pf H^r-nujth.". 
 The speeches of many noble members, of the House 
 of Lords and the stirring sentences ofj^dfrd Mi'.oir.niry 
 on the subject deal not with the gates themselves 
 but with the proclamation with which they were set 
 up and the policy of their being brought to India 
 and spoken about with such a flourish of trumpets. 
 Mr. Fergusson thinks that the gates were those of 
 Mahmud's tomb at Glinzni, and is one of the many 
 imitations made in Cabul and Ghazni of the far-fnm- 
 ed gates of the Hindu temple and never closer to 
 Somnath than they are now. The discussion with 
 reference to those gates had gone on for many years, 
 and the highest authorities have come to the con- 
 clusion that they, are bare imitations with consider- 
 able modifications of the original. The gates when 
 carefully examined by microscope have revealed the' 
 secret that they are of deodar pine and when sketched 
 by artists have been found to contain ornaments of 
 a Mahomedan origin. Lord Canning who had con- 
 siderable tastes for antiquarian researches had caused 
 a thorough investigation to be made into the subject, 
 and he seems to be the first Viceroy who showed his 
 scepticism of the subject, notwithstanding the recital 
 and assumption of the fact in Lord Ellenborough's 
 proclamation. It was thought strange that while 
 
102 
 
 these gates were replete with Mahomedan ornaments 
 not a single figure of the 33 millions of Hindu gods 
 should appeat there, and the conclusion was arrived 
 at, 'that alter the original gates of Somnath which 
 iwl -been plaoe c dk>ver the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni 
 had been destroyed by fire, a new pair was made with 
 Mahomedan ornaments when the tomb was repaired 
 and replenished. The horse-shoes nailed over the 
 old portals should be noted, and there is no doubt 
 that these gates give evidence of a great age, that 
 several panels had been smashed and rude repairs 
 had been sought to be made by scraps of wood and 
 iron. The gates were noticed to be in the Diwan-i- 
 Am by travellers up to 1860. 
 
 To the south of the Anguri Bagh is the 
 Jehangiri Mahal a building bearing the name of 
 Akbar's son and successor. This is a two storied 
 building of red-sandstone inlaid with straight lines 
 of white marble, and having two courts, the larger 
 of which is 70 ft. square. The Hindu brackets, 
 the lotus flowers, the pairs of birds under them, 
 the richly-carved pillars, of a shape and decoration 
 unique in Saracenic edifices would all tend to show 
 that much was borrowed from the fine efforts in 
 architectural art, made in Jeypur and the other 
 neighbouring cities of Rajputana in the construction 
 of this particular mahal. On the roof of this build- 
 ing are a number of cisterns in which the water 
 
103 
 
 of the Jamna used to be stored and a number of 
 copper pipes by means of which they used to be 
 distributed to the different parts of the palace. There 
 are two pavilions of massive style and elaborate carv- 
 ing on the top of the roof of this building, one of 
 which has been modernized for use and the other 
 is yet perfect. The chambers in the Jehangiri Mahal 
 are most exquisitely and elaborately carved, and are 
 singularly elegant in all their details. As one sees 
 them after some centuries, they appear to have a 
 sort of subdued and softened beauty that should be 
 highly appreciated. This particular part of the palace 
 presents a very beautiful appearance when looked 
 at from the grassy lawn just outside it and seems 
 to be built in the finest Indo-Saracenic style. There 
 are some chambers which are peculiarly constructed 
 and which were used for the play of hide-and-seek. 
 The stairs just to the south of the Khas Mahal lead 
 to many subterranean chambers and buildings which 
 extend over a considerable distance and terminate 
 in the Baoli or well-house at the south-east angle 
 in the Fort. Large buildings in the east have al- 
 ways underground chambers that remain delight- 
 fully cool even when the heat is at its greatest 
 and the fiercest winds of summer might be raging 
 at their highest. It was in these chambers that the 
 emperor and courtiers spent the hottest part of the 
 day up to the evening hour when they might 
 
104 
 
 conveniently come out. The well -house is now used 
 as a military cell. Just beyond the Jehangiri 
 Mahal is a juiced way which leads to the Amar Singh 
 Gate, on elegant structure which would have looked 
 very tine indeed when it used to he covered, as it 
 once was, with glazed tiles of bright enamel. 
 
 I have described in the first chapter the vicissi- 
 tudes of the Agra Fort, its glories under Akbar and 
 Jehangir, its reverses of fortune during the succeed- 
 ing reigns, and its history under British rule. 
 I need not repeat my remarks again in this place. 
 Taken all in all, it is one of the most imposing and 
 interesting of the edifices of the civilized globe, and 
 amply repays a visit. 
 
SECUNDRA. 
 
 Secundra is the name of a village, five miles 
 away from Agra, on the road that leads from it to 
 Delhi and Lahore, and contains the tomb of Akbar. 
 It is, by the accounts most common of its founda- 
 tion, named after Secunder Lodi, the second em- 
 peror of the Lodi dynasty, but one Yankee author 
 has confidently asserted that it takes its name from 
 Alexander the Great who is known in Eastern litera- 
 ture by the name of Secunder. The American 
 writer acknowledges that by the most authenticated 
 accounts, Alexander fought Porus on the banks of 
 the Hydaspes, and never came eastward of the Panjab 
 plains, but he thinks that his name had always been 
 a great one in the imagination of the East, and 
 it was not an unusual circumstance to find his 
 name in its corrupted form connected with eastern, 
 towns and villages. The road to Secundra leads 
 through rich fields, the site of one of the most 
 populous parts of the imperial city. The Delhi 
 Gate of the city might be seen just on the left of the 
 traveller as he proceeds to Secundra, and is a massive 
 structure of red sand-stone still in a well preserved 
 state. The way from beyond the Delhi Gate has 
 
106 
 
 interesting structures on both sides, which would be 
 detailed hereafter. As we near Secundra we find a 
 horse-statue, and a walled enclosure, and a building 
 in sand-stone in good preservation, dating from the 
 reign of Jehangir. The Secundra contains the tomb 
 
 o o 
 
 of Akbar, is situated in a walled garden, and is an 
 imposing and interesting edifice. It has been thus 
 described by a critic who could fully appriciate its 
 architectural and artistic beauty. " Perhaps, how- 
 ever, the most characteristic of Akbar's buildings is 
 the tomb he commenced to erect for himself at 
 Secundra near Agra, which is quite un like any other 
 tomb built in India either before or since, and of a 
 design borrowed, as I believe, from a Hindu or more 
 correctly Buddhist model. It stands in an exten- 
 sive garden (of ninety acres ) still kept up, approach, 
 ed by one noble gateway. In the centre of this 
 garden on a raised platform stands the tomb itself 
 of a pyramidal form. The lower storey measures 
 320ft. each way exclusive of angle towers. It is 
 30 ft. in height, and pierced by ten great arches on 
 each face and with a larger entrance adorned with a 
 mosaic of murble in the centre. On this terrace 
 stands another far more ornate, measuring 186 ft. on 
 each side and 14 ft. 9 in. in height. A third and 
 fourth of similar design and respectively 15 ft. 2 in. 
 and 14 ft. 6 in. high stand on this, all these being 
 of red sand-stone. Within and above the last is a 
 
107 
 
 Tvhite marble enclosure 157 ft. each way or external- 
 ly just half the length of the lowest terrace, its outer 
 wall entirely composed of marble trellis-work of the 
 most beautiful patterns. Inside it is surrounded by 
 a colonnade or cloister of the same material, in the 
 centre of which on a raised platform is the tomb- 
 stone of the founder, a splendid piece of the most 
 beautiful arabasque tracery. This however is not the 
 true burial place ; but the mortal remains of this 
 great king repose under a far plainer tomb-stone in 
 a vaulted chamber in the pavement, 35 ft. square, 
 exactly under the simulated tomb that adorns the 
 summit of the mausoleum. At first sight it might 
 appear that the design of this curious and exception- 
 al tomb was a caprice of the monarch who built it, 
 or an importation from abroad. My impression on 
 the contrary is, that it is a direct imitation of some 
 such building as the old Buddhist viharas which 
 may have existed applied to other purposes in Ak- 
 bar's time. Turning back, for instance, to the great 
 Rath of Mahavellipore it will be seen that the num- 
 ber and proportion of the storeys is the same. The 
 pavilions that adorn the upper storey of Akbar's 
 tomb appear distinct reminiscences of the cells that 
 stand on the edge of each platform of the rock-cut 
 example. If the tomb had been crowned by a domi- 
 cal chamber over the tombstone the likeness would 
 have been so great, that no one could mistake it, 
 
108 
 
 and my conviction is that such a chamber was part 
 of the original design. No such royal tomb remains 
 exposed to the air in any Indian mausoleum ; and 
 the raised platform in the centre of the upper cloister, 
 38 ft. square, looks so like its foundation, that I can- 
 not help believing it was intended for that purpose. 
 As the monument now stands the pyramid has a 
 truncated and unmeasuring aspect. The total height 
 of the building now is a little more than 100 ft. 
 to the top of the angle pavilions : and a central 
 dome 30 or 40 ft. higher, which is the proportion 
 that the base gives, seems just what is wanted to 
 make this tomb so beautiful in outline and in propor- 
 tion as it is in detail. Had it been so completed it 
 certainly would have ranked next to the Taj among 
 Indian mausolea." 
 
 The inscription on the Secundra says that it 
 was finished in the reign of Akbar's son and suc- 
 cessor. The autobiography of Jehangir states, in 
 A. D. 1608, he inspected personally some portions 
 of the work, and was so dissatisfied with them that 
 he had them re-constructed at a cost of fifteen lakhs 
 of rupees. The gate to the Secundra had four lofty 
 minarets which had been wanting after some little 
 height for many years past. It is said by one 
 account, that some British soldiers of Lord Lake's 
 camp ascended them while entirely drunk and died 
 from falling from them, and the British general 
 
109 
 
 caused cannon-balls to be fired at them and portions 
 of them to be shot away. We have narrated else- 
 where the reason why the other account of the Jat 
 conquerors of Agra having shot them away is the 
 more probable as an European visitor of undouted 
 veracity found them to be in this spoilt state long 
 before Lake's time. It appears that both Finch and 
 Hawkins saw this building before it was finally 
 finished. Finch says that after ten years' work the 
 work remained in an unfinished state, and Hawkins 
 says that although three thousand labourers had 
 worked at it for fourteen years, the anticipations 
 were that another such period would be necessary 
 before the completion of the work. 
 
 The most beautiful part of the building is cer- 
 tainly the white marble enclosure with perforated 
 screens on the highest story. From its lattice win- 
 dows a beautiful view can be obtained of the country 
 around, and the domes of the Taj are seen in the dis- 
 tance. This view is a very fine one, especially to- 
 wards the verdant fields and groves on the river- 
 side. The height of this enclosure is 74 ft. from the 
 ground, and it is covered with Persian inscriptions 
 taken from a poem that Abul Fazl, the minister of 
 Akbar, had composed in honour of his late master. 
 The two important words of Akbar's creed Allah-ho~ 
 Akbar and Jilal Jallali-hoo together with ninety-nine 
 different appellations of the Almighty are to be found 
 
110 
 
 in these inscriptions. The discussion as to whether 
 the upper enclosure was meant to have the blue 
 vault of heaven as its canopy or whether it was 
 intended to have a dome of considerable size and 
 elegance over it, has not yet been settled. One 
 theory is that a dome with splendid ceiling was to 
 have rested on the top of this marble enclosure, and 
 there seem to be traces of the foundations of such a 
 structure. The main gateway has some inscriptions 
 on it. These praise the Emperor Jehangir who 
 built this tomb, and give A. D. 1614 as the date 
 when it was finally completed. The name of the 
 engraver, Abdul Huq, a native of Shiraz, is also given 
 in many places. Besides the main gateway there 
 are three other gateways, one of which ( that to the 
 west ) with its paintings has been newly repaired, 
 and is a nice thing to look at from a distance. The 
 real tomb is in a vaulted chamber in the first floor, 
 with a hall 38 ft. square, whose walls were covered 
 over with paintings in gold a small specimen of which 
 has been recently restored. On both sides of the main 
 hall there are smaller chambers which contain the 
 tombs of his relatives. The tomb of Akbar is a very 
 plain one, and is almost sublime in its simplicity. 
 The chamber in which it is situated admits but little 
 light, and it has to be seen with a light to be dis- 
 tinctly visible. Tradition has it that by the side 
 of this tomb the books, the arms, and the raiment of 
 
Ill 
 
 the emperor were placed. Bat these had been filch- 
 ed by the Jats in the last century and carried off to 
 Bharatpur, and it is quite possible that a diligent 
 search by an able antiquary would still be able to 
 trace out some relics of them. The second and the 
 third storeys present large terraces and chambers all 
 of red sandstone with pavilions on light arches and 
 nicely-painted surroundings. Anybody examining 
 these minute decorations and ornaments yet extant 
 with nice scrutiny would be able to judge of their 
 splendours in former days. The uppermost story is 
 built after a highly-intricate and complicated design, 
 and the marble screens are of varied figures and ex- 
 quisite workmanship. It was here that Bayard 
 Taylor called up the images of the Alcazar of Seville 
 and the Alhambra of Granada and said to himself 
 that the work of the Moguls appeared to him like a 
 magnificent dream. 
 
 Here is another elegant description of the mau- 
 soleum of Akbar. " The tomb of Akbar stands in 
 the midst of a large walled garden, which has a lofty 
 gateway of red sandstone in the centre of each of 
 its sides. From these four gateways which are up- 
 wards of seventy feet high, four grand causeways of 
 hewn stone converge to the central platform on 
 which the mausoleum stands. The intermediate 
 spaces are filled with orange, mangoes, banana, palm, 
 and peepal trees. In the centre of the causeways 
 
112 
 
 are immense tanks and fountains. The platform oi 
 white stone which terminates these magnificent ap- 
 proaches is about four hundred feet square. The 
 mausoleum which is a square measures more than 
 three hundred feet of a side and rises in five terraces, 
 in a pyramidal form to the height of one hundred 
 feet. Around each of the terraces runs an arched 
 gallery surmounted by rows of cupolas resting on 
 circles of small pillars. The material of the edifice 
 is red sandstone except the upper story which is of 
 white marble. A long descending passage leads 
 from the main entrance to a vaulted hall in the 
 centre of the structure ; light is admitted through 
 a few small openings in the dome barely sufficient 
 to show you a plain tomb in the form of a sacro- 
 phagus with a wreath of fresh flowers on it. Beneath 
 it is the dust of Akbar, one of the greatest men 
 who ever wielded a sceptre, the fourth descend- 
 ant in a direct line from Tamerlane. In him culmi- 
 nated the wisdom, the power, and the glory of that 
 illustrious line". 
 
 A little further down on the Muttra Road is the 
 red sandstone building which is known as the palace 
 of Mariam Begum, Akbar's Portuguese wife. Though 
 it is an undoubted fact that the Jesuit fathers had 
 great influence in Akbar's court, many modern scho- 
 lars think the fact of Akbar's having an European 
 wife extremely doubtful, and suggest that the name 
 
113 
 handed down bv tradition refers to Jehan<nr's mother. 
 
 daughter of Raja Buhara Mul of Jeypur who was 
 better known by her title Marium Zamani or the 
 Mary of the period, who is stated to have died in 
 Agra in A. H. 1032. It is generally believed that 
 these buildings were the country-houses of the Lodi 
 dynasty, and Akbar merely improved upon the orig- 
 inal. They have been very much modernised, and 
 are used for the purposes of an orphange that had its 
 foundation in the number of orphan children left by 
 the great famine of 1838, and which is still in a 
 flourishing condition. Many a poor boy and girl, 
 left helpless and destitute on the world in early years, 
 had been brought up and taught the useful arts by 
 kind-hearted missionaries, and thus enabled to live 
 useful and respectable lives. The Protestant Church 
 stands close by, and as most of the orphans have 
 embraced the religion of Christ, it looks almost us 
 an isolated Christian village in the midst of a 
 heathen population * 
 
 * The traveller would be interested to see in this orphange a curious 
 creature, in the shape of a man, now about forty years old It is said that 
 lie was left an orphan in a dense jungle, and was bred up by a she-wolf who 
 suckled him till his fifteenth year. He was rescued by some robber tribes, 
 and is said to have acquired the exact habits of the animal that had brought 
 him up He can not speak yet, and although his habits have considerably 
 changed by contact with men for 25 years, he can yet indicate by signs his 
 former mode of life. He is an interesting phenomenon, and is the modern 
 counterpart to the storj of Eomulus and Keuius of Roman history. 
 
ITIMAD-UD-DOWLAH, RAM BAGH, AND OTHER 
 TOMBS ON THE LEFT BANK OF THE RIVER. 
 
 The tomb of Itimad-ud-dowlah is reached by 
 crossing the pontoon bridge and going a little to 
 the left. It is situated in a square garden which is 
 well kept up to the present day. The approach to 
 the main buildings is by a gate of red sandstone, 
 tastefully ornamented, and up a paved causeway. 
 This building enshrines the relics of Ghias Beg, 
 better known by his later title of Nawab Itimad-ud- 
 dowlah, the father of Asaf Khan and Nur Jehan, 
 and the grandfather of the lady of the Taj. He came 
 out to India with his son and daughter to seek his 
 fortunes, and presented himself before Akbar as an 
 adventurer. The passion of Jehangir for his daughter 
 who was an occasional visitor to the emperor's 
 harem, was discovered early, and emperor Akbar to 
 get her out of his son's way married her to a young 
 nobleman of high blood, and sent them away with 
 political powers to a distant part of Bengal. But 
 Jehangir, no sooner had he succeeded to the throne, 
 contrived to have her husband murdered and to have 
 her brought to Agra. She at first rejected the over- 
 tures of the emperor, but she was won over after a 
 time, and was installed as the chief empress of the 
 
115 
 
 sovereign. She was not only the entire mistress of 
 the seraglio, but her voice was also paramount in 
 State matters. Her father and afterwards her brother 
 were raised to the prime ministership of the realm, 
 and Nur Jehan's counsel was sought in all affairs 
 of. State. Nawab Itirnad-ud-dowlah died at Kangra, 
 while proceeding to Cashmere in 1621-2. His body 
 was embalmed and brought to Agra by his imperial 
 daughter, and she at first proposed to build over 
 his remains a tomb and mausoleum of solid sil- 
 ver highly polished to glitter in the sun, but she 
 was dissuaded from doing so by the argument that 
 
 O J o 
 
 the sacred edifice if built of silver would be profaned 
 by robber hands who would carry away the precious 
 metal. She then chose marble as a less costly and 
 less portable material. The character of Ghias Beg 
 is given in full in Jehangir's autobiography. It is 
 said that he had great love of poetry, had some capa- 
 city for composing poetry himself, imitating the old 
 classics, that he was genial in humour, punctual in 
 habits, and always found to be doing some thing 
 useful. Jehangir places it too among his merits that 
 he very much liked bribes and illicit gains, and freely 
 and without reserve asked for them. The tomb of 
 Itimad-ud-dowlah is probably the first building in 
 order of time where the influence of the Italian artists 
 has been distinctly traced. The Indian artists had 
 forms, details, and patterns of their own, and under 
 
116 
 
 the influence of the artists from Florence changed 
 their materials. In no building of the reign of Akbar 
 was the art of inlaying with mosaics ever employed? 
 but it forms the chief characteristic of all of Shah 
 Jehan's buildings, and the smaller and more refined 
 materials came gradually more and more into use. 
 The tomb of Itimad-ud-dowlah represents the tran- 
 sition stage between the two styles, and as one of 
 the first it is certainly one of the least successful 
 specimens of its class. The patterns do not quite fit 
 in the places where they are put, and the spaces are 
 not always those best fitted for this style of decoration. 
 Altogether I cannot help fancying that the Italians 
 had more to do with this building than was at all 
 desirable, and they are to blame for its want of 
 grace. But on the other hand, the beautiful tracery 
 of the pierced marble slabs of its windows which 
 resemble Selim Christi's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri ? 
 the beauty of its white marble walls, and the rich 
 colour of its decorations make up so beautiful a whole 
 that it is only on comparing it with the works of 
 Shah Jehan that we are justified in finding fault." 
 The sandstone terrace of the main building is 149 ft. 
 square, and is 3 '4 ft. high from the ground. The 
 principal chamber is surrounded by other smaller 
 chambers containing the tombs of other members 
 of the same family. The central chamber is a 
 parallellogram, the floor consisting of marble inlaid 
 
117 
 
 with other sorts of stones in an arabesque manner. 
 This hall measures 22 ft. 3 in. on each side, and 
 contains inscriptions in Togra characters from the 
 Koran and other holy books. There is a pavilion 
 on the first floor, reached by sandstone staircases. 
 The pavilion is of white marble richly worked in, 
 and is topped by an oblong dome which has two 
 light pinnacles. The cenotaphs in the second story 
 contain no inscriptions and are boldly carved out of 
 beautiful stone. The upper terrace is 69 ft. square. 
 On four corners of the building in the second story 
 there stand four small minars, which are easy of 
 ascent and from which one sees a beautiful view of 
 the river-front of the Agra city and enjoys very 
 pleasant breezes at all hours. 
 
 The tomb of Itimad-ud-Dowlah has been often 
 compared with Nur Jehan's other building at Lahore 
 which contains the tombs of her husband and her- 
 self. These buildings too standing in extensive 
 gardens has noble and richly decorated gateways, 
 and marble and red sandstone are used in lavishly 
 ornamenting the buildings. Jehangir fell early a 
 victim to strong drink, dying in 1627. The Em- 
 press Nur Jehan lived for some years after her hus- 
 band, enjoying an annual stipend of two lacs and 
 devoting herself to artistic and religious culture. 
 
 From Itimad-ud-Dowlah a short drive to the 
 north along a metalled road would lead the visitor 
 
118 
 
 to Rambagh, which has been repeatedly mentioned 
 in Mogul history. Whether it is a corruption of 
 Arambag, or whether the name was given after the 
 favourite hero of the Hindus by the Maharatta con- 
 querors we are unable to say. Baber is said to have 
 spent his leisure hours here, and it appears to have 
 been the scene of many imperial picnics of his suc- 
 cessors. It was the favorite garden of Empress Nur 
 Jehan, and it came to be styled as the garden of Nur 
 Afshan. It was in those days, as it is now, an or- 
 chard and a pleasure garden, and the terrace on the 
 river front is said to have contained several respect- 
 able edifices all of which now seem to have been 
 destroyed. There are some subterranean chambers 
 yet to be seen looking out on the river and two 
 sandstone structures of some size which have been 
 modernised and improvised into Dak bungalows. 
 The other buildings seem to have perished during 
 the Maharatta conquest of Agra. Rambagh as it is, 
 though often visited by travellers, is scarcely a thing 
 of interest. The garden is still well-kept, and it is 
 considered by the wealthier European residents of 
 Agra as a delicious retreat in summer. It serves for 
 many of the English residents of Agra the same pur- 
 poses as the Barrackpur Park to those of the great 
 city of Calcutta. Many a newly married couple 
 spend their honey-moon here, and many a young 
 damsel looks on the world within its walls for the 
 
119 
 
 first time, in her new state. But the visitor to Ram- 
 bagh will find the place invested with an antique and 
 an historic interest, when he would recall the picture 
 of Baber and his successors standing on the self same 
 spot and joining in open-air revels, merriments, and 
 games with their courtiers or with the chief ladies 
 of the zenana and merging in picnics and drinks the 
 anxious cares of a large and turbulent empire. 
 Of the ancient buildings and sites across the Jumna, 
 we should mention some. We shall take them in 
 order. 
 
 1. Bulund Bagh, a garden belonging to Bulund 
 Khan, an eunuch of Jehangir's. A massive pile of 
 masonry with seven wells and a tower supported on 
 thirty -two pillars can be seen here. 
 
 2. Lahara Bagh, also called Sayad-ka-Bagh, 
 lies between Rambagh and Chini-ka-roza. It is 
 named after Zahara, a daughter of Baber's. It has a 
 wall built on the river, and the remains of a river- 
 side palace can yet be traced. Mr. Carlleyle says 
 that this building of the transition period between 
 the Pa than and the early Mogul style. 
 
 3. The Chini-ka-roza so called from the 
 beautiful porcelain to be found in that building. It 
 is a rectangular building nearly eighty feet square, 
 surmounted by a central dome. The principal 
 chamber was an octagon, surrounded by four ante- 
 chambers, and the outer wall had a coating of enamel 
 
120 
 
 very much resembling china which was beautifully 
 colored and decorated. The building bears no in- 
 
 n 
 
 scription, but is traditionally ascribed to a poet 
 named Afzal Khan who coming originally from 
 Shiraz had succeeded in winning high favours at the 
 imperial court, and was accountant to Shah Jehan. 
 He died at Lahore in 1639. The dome is of the 
 transitional period, and differs from the bulbous 
 domes of the Taj and the Moti Masjid. 
 
 4. Moti Bagh and Moti Masjid just opposite 
 the tomb of Itimad-ud-Dowlah, modernized since a 
 long time said to have been founded by Shah Jehan. 
 
 5. Nawabganj, a walled enclosure, said to have 
 been built by Nawab Salat Khan in the reign of 
 Shah Jehan, with high walls and towers now used 
 as a residence. 
 
 6. Humayon's Mosque in the village of Kach- 
 pura whose inscription says that the date of its com- 
 pletion was 1530 A. D. 
 
 7. Chahar Bagh and garden palace of Baber 
 entirely in ruins, situated to the east of the Kachpura 
 village. 
 
 8. Mahtab Bagh, the garden whose founda- 
 tions still remain opposite to the Taj, the site where 
 Shah Jehan intended to build his own tomb. The 
 eastern ornamental tower is nearly perfect yet, and 
 the foundations to the western tower, can yet be 
 traced for a distance of 320 yards. 
 
121 
 
 9. Achanak Bagh, situated a mile east of 
 Kachpura. The entrance gate to it is in ruins, and 
 some chambers opening on a terrace on the river 
 are said to have been built in the time of Baber, 
 and it seems to have taken its name from that of 
 a princess of the times. 
 
THE JAMI MASJID. 
 
 On the north-west of the Fort is the Jami Mas- 
 
 jid, built by Shah Jehan's daughter, Jahanara, which 
 
 took five years to complete. This daughter of Shah 
 
 Jehan was nicknamed Masjid Begum, and it was she 
 
 who made herself responsible for the whole cost of 
 
 construction that amounted to five lakhs of Rupees. 
 
 It was first called the Jahanara Masjid, but its name 
 
 was subsequently changed to Jami Masjid or the 
 
 great mosque of the city. The following is a good 
 
 description of it. " The mosque is built of red 
 
 sand-stone, and consists of a large court placed on 
 
 a platform raised 11 ft. above the ground on the 
 
 east side. The mosque proper is to the west of the 
 
 court ; it is a large building 130 ft. long by 100 ft. 
 
 broad, supported by two rows of arches and five 
 
 openings or archways to the front, one principal and 
 
 two interior on each side. Four octagonal domed 
 
 cupolas stand one at each corner of the roof, a row 
 
 of smaller square cupolas adorns the front, and four 
 
 slender shafts or minarets rise from the four corners 
 
 of the roof of the central compartment, which is 
 
 more elevated than the rest. The roof is surmounted 
 
 towards the rear by three large domes of somewhat 
 
 peculiar shape, full bottomed, which have been 
 
123 
 
 compared to balloons reversed, and of a" remarkable 
 pattern, the courses of masonry being zig-zag and 
 alternately of sand-stone in wide bands and narrow 
 lines of white marble." The eastern gateway and 
 the cloisters on the east side which were very 
 imposing, were destroyed during the mutiny that 
 they might not serve as a shelter for rebel troops to 
 fire on the fort which lay in the front. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS IN THE 
 CITY AND THE SUBURBS. 
 
 We shall notice briefly the other interesting and 
 ancient buildings in the city and its immediate 
 neighbourhood. They are as given below : 
 
 1. Some old palaces near the Taj, named the 
 Tiliyar-ka-Bagicha, the water- side palace with a 
 bastion and tower known as Lai Diwar, the Haveli 
 of Nawab Khan Dauran Khan, Wazir Azam, Ahmad 
 Bakhari's Dargah, and a small mosque near the 
 south-east enclosure of the Taj. 
 
 2. The tomb known as Rauza Diwanji's in 
 the village of Basai, and the large walled enclosure 
 known as the garden of Mahbat^ Khan between the 
 Taj and the Cantonments. 
 
 3 The Takht Pahalwan and the Rauza Firoz 
 Khan on the Gwalior Road just opposite the third 
 mile-stone. The former is the name of a village 
 that grew round the tomb of a wrestler of imperial 
 times. There is to be found here a large slab of 
 stone eight feet square which formerly formed part 
 of the mausoleum. Firoz Khan's tomb is a square 
 edifice of red sand-stone with four doors on large 
 arches, and at the corners are two four-domed cupo- 
 las. The tomb is said to be that of the chief eunuch 
 
125 
 
 of Akbar's palace who built Firozabad, and who 
 gives his name also to Tal Firoz Khan, a large 
 masonry tank which lies near the mausoleum. The 
 interior of the main building and the portal to the 
 east are elaborately carved and ornamented in Hindu 
 style. 
 
 4 Makhni-ka-gumbaz consists of a central 
 chamber like a Hindu temple with two side cham- 
 bers. It is said to be a part of Dehra Bagh which 
 was built by Baber's daughter. The bagh is now 
 mere open ground, the site is yet pointed out, and 
 there are the ruins of many wells all over it. 
 
 5 Jodh Bai Mahal near Khwaja-ka- Serai now 
 completely in ruins. It was a building 80 ft. square, 
 and is said to have enshrined the remains of Jodh Bai. 
 
 6. The Id gah is a mile off on the Khairagarh 
 road, being a mosque at the head of a great walled 
 enclosure 570 ft. by 530 ft. There are six arches, 
 the central one being very lofty. It was built, it is 
 said, in forty days, and dates from Shah Jehan's 
 time. 
 
 7. Hammam Allah Yerdi Khan in Chhipitola, 
 to which the entrance is by a fine archway, with 
 elaborate carvings and inscription that tells us that 
 it was built by Allah Yerdi Khan in 1620 A. D. 
 There are two sets of chambers which were used as 
 caravanserais, and the arrangements for the bath- 
 rooms were admirably calculated to preserve the 
 
126 
 
 requisite temperature and to give a pleasant bath in 
 hot and cold water according to the requirements of 
 the climate. 
 
 8. The Dargah and Mosque of Shah Ala-ud-din 
 Mujrub, son of Saiyid Suleiman cf Madina in Mohalla 
 Nai-ka-Mandi whose dimensions are 46 ft. by 19 ft. 
 and the tradition about which has been given in 
 narrating the history of Agra in Akbar's time. The 
 inscription on it says that it was built in A. H. 953. 
 
 9. The Akbari Masjid, near the Kinari Bazar, 
 84 ft. by 20 ft. 
 
 10. Kali or Kalan Masjid, or the great mosque, 
 built by Muzaffar Hossain, grandson of Ismail Shah 
 Safi, King of Persia, built of brick and plaster, with 
 five compartments. The domes are black with age, 
 the bricks used are large and flat. 
 
 11. Muatmid Khan's Mosque of red sand- stone, 
 53 ft. by 20 ft. with some exquisite carving. 
 
 12. The Eunuch's Mosque said to have been 
 built by Akbar in honor of an eunuch named Yatim 
 who had succeeded by prayers in bringing down 
 rain from heaven when all other means had failed 
 and who refused to take any reward for the same act. 
 
 13. Bagh Rai Sheo Das, a Munsabdar of the 
 reign of Mahomed Shah, the garden named after 
 Hakim Karim AH Khan, and Rouza Jafar Khan 
 named after a munsabdar of 5,000, a building in the 
 shape of a rectangle on a lofty platform with flat roofs. 
 
127 
 
 14. Chhatri Raja Jaswant Singh, a good view 
 of which can be obtained from Rambagh on the 
 opposite side of the river, with walls beautifully 
 carved and having figures of vases and flowers. 
 
 15. Mahal Raja Bhoj near the temple of 
 Mahadeo Walkeshwar, named after a Raja who 
 cannot be identified. 
 
 16. Bagh Ladli Begum near the temple of 
 Sitla with a lofty gateway to the south, and false 
 gateways on other sides, enclosing a Hindu pavilion 
 of modern date. Ladli Begum was sister of Abul 
 Fazl, and Faizi, wife of Islam Khan. 
 
 17. Kandhari Bagh, present town residence of 
 H. H. the Maharajah of Bharatpur, containing the 
 tomb of the daughter of Muzzaffar Hossain, grandson 
 of Ismail Shah, king of Persia, and queen of Shah 
 Jehan. 
 
 18. Sadik Khan's tomb, in the fields north of 
 the Sikandra road containing the tomb of Akbar's 
 spiritual guide. 
 
 19. Tomb of Salabat Khan, supported on 64 
 pillars in six rows each way, identified with the tomb 
 of Shah Jehan's paymaster Salabat Khan said to 
 have been killed by Amar Singh Rah tor. 
 
 20. The Serai of Itibar Khan Khwaja, four 
 miles from Agra on the Secundra Road. It was once 
 an open Baradari now walled up. 
 
 21. Guru ka Tal, a tank about 180 yards 
 
128 
 
 square, fed by the waters of a canal. 
 
 These ancient buildings are now managed by a 
 committee of local Mahomedan gentlemen, the larger 
 ones being entrusted to a board, five in number, con- 
 stituted under Kegulation XIX. of 1810. In 1809 
 and 1814 repairs were undertaken on a large scale. 
 In 1855, at the instance of Colonel Sleeman, the 
 tomb of Itimad-ud-dowlah was repaired. Since 1876, 
 the Archaeological Department is in charge of these 
 famous monuments of ancient art and history, and 
 a considerable sum has been spent upon them. 
 
 The Catholic Mission and the Catholic College 
 are said to be of very great antiquity. Akbar's 
 toleration gave the Portuguese fathers a fair footing 
 and a pension also was given to them. Several 
 fathers of the Mission were in high favour in the 
 imperial court, and several members of the royal 
 family were instructed in the doctrines of Christian- 
 ity. The Jesuits entertained great hopes of the pro- 
 gress of Christianity in the time of king l Jehanguire ' 
 and two of his nephews embraced the Christian re- 
 ligion. The grant from the imperial treasury to the 
 Christian Mission was stopped by Shah Jehan, and 
 since that time there were no hopes of the religion of 
 Christ except perhaps what was entertained by that 
 familiarity which Father Buzz had with Dara. 
 
FATEHPUR SIKRI. 
 
 Fatehpur Sikri lies 23 miles west-south -west of 
 Agra, and 10 miles south-west of Kiraoli. It is con- 
 nected with Achnera, the nearest railway station, by 
 a road 11 miles long. From Agra the traveller goes 
 to Fatehpur Sikri by a road which meets the Drum- 
 mond Road just opposite to what is known as the 
 Baker Garden. It passes through Shahganj where 
 was fought one of the most disastrous actions dur- 
 ing the early days of the mutiny of 1857, and the 
 details of which have been given at some length in 
 relating the history of the period. Just on the road 
 are to be found some interesting relics of the past, such 
 as Mujdi-ka-Gumbuz, containing the tomb of Mirza 
 Hindal, son of Akbar and of the chief queen of that 
 emperor, Sultan Roquia, the gardens of Begum Sum- 
 roo and the tomb of Jodh Bai, the Hindu wife of Je- 
 hangir, all of which had been alluded to above. The 
 road after crossing the Raj pu tana Malwa State line, 
 goes on through a level part of the country where 
 nothing meets the eye of the traveller but green 
 fields on both sides. The road goes through exact- 
 ly the same line as the old imperial road, and 
 crosses on its way some old imperial irrigation works 
 
130 
 
 which are now in a state of disuse, and which are 
 crossed by bridges of very old date. At the 23rd 
 mile-stone Fatehpur Sikri is reached, and the site of 
 the old ruins on the top of a sand -stone hill becomes 
 distinctly visible. The site of Fatehpur Sikri has 
 thus been described by Dr. Planck. He says, " The 
 site might be described as an oblong, measuring 
 a mile in length and three-fourths of a mile in 
 width. Its northern margin is bounded by a wide 
 sandstone ridge, from one to two hundred feet in 
 height, its remainder is bounded on all sides by a 
 battlemented stone wall 20 ft. high, pierced by 10 
 or 12 gateways. The wall with its towers stands 
 up bravely, but ruinous parts threaten a speedy 
 downfall. The buildings of the court which now 
 remain, occupy the ridge with Selim Chisti's tomb 
 in the place of honor at the highest point, but evi- 
 dences are not wanting to show that formerly the 
 wide, fairly level expanse enclosed by the wall was 
 laid out in gardens containing pleasant garden- 
 houses of which only traces remain. The modern 
 town of Fatehpur Sikri occupies the western end 
 only of this large enclosure, on the level below the 
 ridge, and partly on the ridge, where the houses 
 rise up to meet the great flight of steps leading to 
 Selim Chisti's tomb which overshadows the town. 
 It is a stone-built town, for stone is the cheapest 
 material of the place, but the houses are not worthy of 
 
131 
 
 the material, being as a rule low and mean-looking," 
 Fatehpur Sikri is now a municipal town and 
 the head -quarters of the Karaoli Tahsil. It is now 
 noted for the manufacture of rude millstones and 
 a few coarse carpets, but for fifteen years it was the 
 capital of the Mogul empire. It seems to have 
 been abandoned after 1586, and certainly no build- 
 ing exists here later than that date. The modern 
 buildings are few and insignificant. Sweet water 
 can be obtained here only from two old wells known 
 as the Ikram Bagh and Hakim's well. 
 
 Abul Fazl, writing in 1596, mentions Fatehpur 
 Sikri as one of the principal places of the empire with 
 a large and extensive trade. The author of the Ain- 
 i-Akbari is lavish in his praises of the perfection to 
 which the stone-masons' craft had been carried by 
 the artizans of Fatehpur Sikri, and he says that the 
 place was further noted for hair- weaving and silk- 
 spinning. The traveller as he paces through the 
 solitary chambers of what had once been the royal 
 palace, and admires the massive and delicate beauties 
 to be found there, would not be disposed to consider 
 these praises unmerited. Fatehpur Sikri ceased to 
 be the capital of the empire in 1586, and from that 
 date its trade and importance began rapidly to 
 decline. Finch seems to have been in Fatehpur 
 Sikri in the early part of the reign of Jehangir, and 
 says that this beautiful city which had been built 
 
132 
 
 and ruined in fifty years, was then in a very deserted 
 state, and that Akbar had been driven away from 
 it by the badness of the water. The mosque at 
 Fatehpur Sikri is according to him one of the 
 best in the East The description given by De Lact 
 is also one of the oldest available of this place. He 
 says, " The walls remain to this day, but the city 
 is entirely destroyed ; its houses tumbled down, and 
 the soil turned into fields and gardens, so that when 
 you are in the midst of the city you would think 
 yourself in the country rather than in a town. The 
 distance from one gate of the city to the other is 
 three English miles, but it is very dangerous to at- 
 tempt this journey by night." Again, " the royal 
 palace is adorned with many costly edifices, and 
 above it is a rnosque more splendid than any other 
 in the whole East." The ascent to this mosque is by 
 twenty-five or thirty steps, at the top of which is 
 a lofty and most beautiful gate, visible from a great 
 distance. Within is a broad area paved with flags of 
 stone and surrounded on all sides by magazines 
 with lofty columns of solid rock and immense ceil- 
 ings, near the gate is seen a splendid monument 
 wherein is buried a certain holy Mahomedan, of the 
 sect of those called Kalendars, who is said to have 
 constructed this mosque at his own expense. Com- 
 ing from the Agra direction, the traveller passes first 
 a series of vaulted chambers which is commonly 
 
133 
 
 known as the mint. No coin of any description 
 had up to this time been excavated here, and thus 
 western scholars though bowing to tradition seem 
 to doubt the fact stated above. 
 
 When Akbar was returning to Agra after the 
 suppression of the re volt of the Uzbec nobles, he was 
 accompanied by his Rajput wife, a princess of the 
 Amber family and daughter of Raja Bhura Mull or 
 Bihari Mull of Jeypur. The empress had twins 
 who died at Fatehpur Sikri, and the holy man suc- 
 ceeded in consoling the royal mother with his 
 ministrations in the hour of her sorrow. The saint 
 then persuaded the emperor and the empress to take 
 up their residence at that place, and the air proving 
 to be good and wholesome, Akbar selected the spot 
 for his own residence, and began his edifices. The 
 city remained the capital of the Mogul empire for 
 fifteen years from 1571 to 1586, and all the im- 
 portant buildings contain inscriptions which show 
 that they were built in the course of these years. 
 The great mosque bears the date 1571, and the 
 white marble tomb the date 1581. The most erudite 
 historians say that when Akbar began to build on 
 the ridge the only village existing there was Sikri, 
 that he caused another town to be founded in its 
 neighbourhood, and named it Fatehpur after the 
 conquest of Grtijrat, and this view derives support 
 from a well-known passage of the great Mahomedan 
 
134 
 
 historian Firishta, (vide Brigg's Translation, II. 234). 
 Another conjecture is that the village of Sikri was 
 the camping place of Emperor Baber when he fought 
 the battle of Biana with Rana Sanga, and he changed 
 the name of the village Sikri to Fatehpur in honor 
 of his great victory there. Another legend locally 
 connected with Fatehpur Sikri has been thus nar- 
 rated by an eminent local antiquary. " Such was 
 the celebrity of the air joined, we are assured, to the 
 hermit's spiritual exertions, that a son was born to 
 them during their stay, and endowed by the grate- 
 ful parents with the name Selim. This name the 
 prince continued to bear for the next five and thirty 
 years, till raised to the throne in 1605 as the Em- 
 peror Jehangir." The legend mentioned in the 
 account of the Agra Fort to the effect that its 
 foundation was owing to persuasions on the part 
 of Selim Chisti, must be taken with one cor- 
 rection. Akbar's head -quarters were at Agra when 
 the Fatehpur palace was begun, and the commence- 
 ment of the fort at Agra dates three years earlier. 
 Legend explains these events in its usual marvellous 
 fashion. At the time of the royal visit the hermit, 
 it is said, had a baby son, aged six months, who 
 seeing his father buried, one day, in deep reflection 
 after a visit from Akbar, suddenly broke silence by 
 asking why he sent away the conqueror of the world 
 in despair. Accustomed to portents, the holy man 
 
135 
 
 calmly answered that all the emperor's children 
 were fated to die in infancy unless some one gave a 
 child of his own to die instead. ' By your rever- 
 ence's permission,' rejoined the courteous but forward 
 infant, C I will die that his majesty may no longer 
 want an heir.' Then, without giving his father time 
 to forbid the sacrifice, the wondrous child at once ex- 
 pired. Nine months later the prince came into the 
 world. If it were worth while to look for the truth 
 in this story it might be found that the prince was a 
 child substituted by a faqir for a royal infant that 
 was still-born. When the fort and palace at Agra 
 were completed Akbar did not wholly abandon 
 Fatehpur Sikri, but it was a sort of country resi- 
 dence, the 23 miles between the two places stand- 
 ing no inconveinent impediment to one to whom 
 riding was a pleasure and who on one occasion 
 rode 220 miles between Ajmere and Agra in two 
 successive days. " Sikri then was probably his 
 Windsor, Agra his London. " The gateways are 
 respectively named Delhi, Lai Agra, Surajpol, 
 Chandanpol, Tehira and Ajmere. 
 
 The great northern gateway, called the Bul- 
 and Darwaza, the u lofty gateway" is 130 feet 
 high above the breast of the ridge. It is reached 
 by a long flight of steps, and is exceedingly noble 
 and imposing in appearance. Its sublime height and 
 massive beauty dwarfs the surrounding buildings. 
 
136 
 
 It was not a part of the original design, but it is 
 meant to be a triumphal arch added many years 
 afterwards. The inscription stands out prominent- 
 ly in the sandstone walls to the left of the 
 traveller as he enters. The inscription has been 
 translated by many authorities of which the follow- 
 ing is the one generally given. " His Majesty King 
 of Kings, heaven of the court, shadow of GOD, 
 Jalal-ud-din Mahrnud Khan the emperor. He con- 
 quered the kingdom of the south, and Dan Des 
 which was formerly called Khan Des in the Divine 
 year 46th ( e. </., of his succession ) corresponding to 
 to the Hijri year 1010. Having reached Fatebpur 
 he proceeded to Agra. " There are many fine expres- 
 sions, in which the emperor and his many virtues 
 are extolled to the skies. The passages which in- 
 culcate humility of spirit in man follow immediately 
 after, and some of them are truly beautiful. They 
 are, " Said Jesus, on Whom be peace, the world is 
 a bridge, pass over it, but build no house there ; he 
 who hopeth for an hour, may hope for an eternity ; 
 the world is but nn hour, spend it in devotion ; the 
 rest is unseen.' 7 Again, "He that standeth up to pray 
 and his heart is not in his duty, the same exalted 
 not himself, remaining far from God. Thy best 
 possession is what thou hast given in alms ; thy 
 best traffic is selling this world for the next. " 
 " Know that the world is a glass where the favour 
 
137 
 
 has come and is gone, take as thine own nothing 
 more than what thon lookest upon. " The inscrip- 
 tions give us a fine insight into the character of 
 Akbar, for they must have been put there under his 
 sanction and approval. Some passages show his 
 religious culture and the humility of the spirit of 
 man in the presence of our Almighty Father. Akbar 
 died four years after the date of the latest of these 
 inscriptions. 
 
 Entering by this gate one comes upon a vast 
 paved court-yard, 433 feet by 366 feet, to the 
 west of which is the finest of Akbar's mosques. 
 The inner court of the mosque is paved with white 
 marble. There are graceful pillars richly-carved ? 
 and the walls and surroundings are ornamented with 
 rich and delicate tints disposed in the shape of 
 geometrical figures. There is a tradition that this 
 mosque has been built in exact imitation of the one 
 at Mecca, but this is not borne out by facts. I have 
 taken pains to compare this one with a sketch of the 
 great Mahomedan cathedral in the holiest of Islamic 
 cities, and the two do not agree except in three 
 particulars. It was here that Akbar preached his 
 peculiar religion and appeared in public as the 
 apostle of his faith. This religion was composed of 
 all the great principles and teachings from all the 
 great religions of the world that were approved of by 
 his enlightened mind. There it was that he stood 
 
138 
 
 one day to deliver a solemn sermon which was to 
 have been an exposition of his faith, but he lost his 
 presence of mind so far as to be unable to go on 
 further than recite two couples of verses which 
 meant that it was under the guidance of his con- 
 science and the inspiration of the Father above that 
 he regulated his conduct in the kingly office. Just 
 behind the mosque are some interesting things. 
 There is the tomb of the infant whose tale has been 
 given above, and who is said to have died to save 
 the children of Akbar. By matter-of-fact critics 
 it is said that the infant buried here was a still-born 
 child of Akbar, for whom a child was substituted by 
 the saint, the child who afterwards came to be 
 known as Prince Selim. Almost next to this is a 
 door which leads to the cave where the saint original- 
 ly lived, with a small mosque hard by, that is said 
 to have been built for his use by pious stone-cutters 
 of the neighbourhood. This mosque has some 
 curious decorations in the brackets. The saint was 
 highly esteemed for his piety, and he used to have 
 pupils from far and near, to sit at his feet. The 
 place is still pointed out where he used to teach his 
 pupils. The life that he is said to have lived with- 
 in a narrow cave has a romantic interest in these 
 days. The great court-yard, when reached back ? 
 will show the traveller to the left the tomb of Selim 
 Chisti arid the mausoleum of Islam Khan. The 
 
139 
 
 tomb of the saint is an exquisite piece of structure 
 that can be compared with the best productions of 
 Mogul Art. The sepulchre is entirely of white 
 marble with the finest polish. The windows have 
 screens elaborately carved, and so delicate is the 
 workmanship that they have been said to resemble 
 lace-work on finest silk. The tracery is disposed to 
 make several geometrical figures of pleasing shape, 
 and there is on all sides of the main building a slop- 
 ing cornice of some width, of white marble and 
 made to stand on brackets of variegated shape and 
 design, in which true art gives place to false artifi- 
 ciality. Entering within the tomb one finds the 
 inside of the walls carved by large slabs of sand- 
 stone, and some paintings which will strike the 
 visitor as recently done up. This was under the 
 order of Mr. Mansell who was magistrate and col- 
 lector of Agra about 1836. The old paintings which 
 had almost disappeared are said to have been done up 
 in such a manner as to be out of keeping with the 
 venerable surroundings of the place. The resting 
 place of the saint is indicated by pavings having a 
 coating of the finest mother-o-pearl, that though 
 venerable with age has the same pleasing effect as 
 if done up only yesterday, and which appears parti- 
 cularly fine when seen by the dim light that is all 
 that the arrangements of the chamber permit it to 
 admit. Mr. Beale fixes the 13th February, 1572, 
 
140 
 
 as the date of the saint's death, nnd the inscription 
 on the inner wall of the tomb shows that it was 
 completed in 1581. The tomb that is immediately 
 beyond is that of Islam Khan who is said to have 
 been a grandson of the saint and who was Governor 
 of Bengal during the reign of Jehangir. On the 
 northern side are the tombs of women, and just op- 
 posite the southern gateway there is a handsome 
 arch which is worth noting. 
 
 Beyond the great court of the Dargah, there lie 
 to the north the houses of Abul Fazl and his brother 
 Faizi. They w r ere the principal followers of Akbar 
 in the matter of his religious views which went by 
 the name of Tauhid-i-Ilahi, and who being accom- 
 plished men of letters could transcribe for posterity 
 its principal tenets. These buildings are now util- 
 ized as boys' schools ; and where the homely teacher 
 now sets his lessons to innocent village-boys, there 
 were once the drawing-rooms and zenanas of the 
 imperial courtiers. To the east of these buildings 
 again, are the quarters w^hich go by the name of 
 Jodh Bai ka Mahal, but which were, according to 
 the most approved authority, appropriated to the 
 use of Sultana Roquia, who w r as cousin and chief 
 wife of emperor Akbar. Jodh Bai is erroneously 
 described as the wife of Akbar and mother of Jehan- 
 gir. From a critical examination of the literature 
 and history of the period it appears however that 
 
141 
 
 Jodh Bai was the wife of Jehangir, his mother being 
 entitled Mariam-uz-Zamani, daughter of Raja Bibari 
 Mai and sister of Raja Bhagwan Das. Professor 
 Blochmann says, after a thorough scrutiny that the 
 accepted tradition that Akbar had four wives, is not 
 borne out by the evidence available. His theory is 
 that Akbar had seven wives, the chief of whom was 
 Sultana Roquia. The set of appartments pointed out 
 as Jodh Bai ka Mahal, were probably the apartments 
 assigned for the use of the Hindu princess who was 
 wife of Akbar. These flank on the north and south 
 a rectangular court 177 ft. by 157 feet, and consist 
 of two-storied and three-storied buildings which 
 have a sloping roof of blue enamel. On the other 
 two sides are galleries which preserve the symmetry. 
 The carvings are Hindu in design, and it is said that 
 some fragments that were found here undoutedly 
 belonged to a Hindu temple. Entering this Mahal 
 on the east by a lofty gate, one goes direct north 
 through an arched passage with pierced screens on 
 both sides supporting a circular canopy to the hill- 
 side where once existed wide and well-paved terraces 
 for enjoying the evening air. Beyond the palace 
 just deecribed there is a paved court, and on raised 
 platforms on all sides of this court there are the 
 houses known as Birbal's house, the Christian lady's 
 house, the Khas Mahal, and other interesting struc- 
 tures to be noted below. The house known as Birbal's 
 
142 
 
 house is styled by several high authorities as that 
 of his daughter. It is a sandstone building, beauti- 
 fully carved in Hindu style. It is in the shape 
 of a square with two stories, and the four upper 
 chambers are said to have been occupied by Birbal's 
 daughter. The materials employed in this building 
 are massive and heavy, and at the same time the 
 workmanship is exquisitely delicate and beautiful. 
 The carvings produce a pleasing effect in their 
 minute finish on the visitor. The roofs which are 
 entirely of stone have been placed on the walls by 
 means of long projecting cornices and skilful arrange- 
 ment of arches. The domes that crown the cham- 
 bers in the upper storey, each of which is 15 feet 
 square, have been obtained by joining by a round 
 piece sixteen large sloping slabs. Though this 
 building and the two to be next described are small 
 in size, it is impossible to say how anything could 
 be done better within the same dimensions and with 
 the same materials, and the though every minute 
 portion is carved there is no artificial or unnatural 
 air about them. 
 
 The house pointed out as having belonged to 
 Akbar's Christian wife, was in reality the protion of 
 the palace which contained the apartments of Jehan- 
 gir's mother, Mariam-uz-Zamani. The western schol- 
 ars regard the tradition of Akbar's having a Christian 
 wife as a mere myth, and they disbelieve it altogether 
 
143 
 
 on the ground that no mention of a fact so singular 
 and unusual should have been made in that com- 
 prehensive book about Akbar, the Ain-i-Akbari by 
 Abul-Fazl. The house is in a good condition, yet 
 except in some parts where figures beautifully carved 
 represented scenes from Ferdousi's Shah nama. 
 This particular part of the palace was so well gilt 
 and painted all over with golden leafs that it was 
 called the Sunehri Makan or the golden house. The 
 representation of the Anunciation on a tablet and 
 of scenes from Hindu mythology on many of the 
 panels have now faded away beyond recognition. 
 This wife of Akbar has found her last resting-place 
 in the tomb near Secundra which is called the Rauza 
 Mariam. 
 
 The Khas Mahal is a paved court-yard having 
 on its southern side the chambers under the Khwab- 
 gab. On the west side of this court-yard is what 
 is known as the girls' school, and on the eastern side 
 are the apartments known as those of Akbar's Turk- 
 ish Begum. Western scholars doubt this fact too, 
 and they account for the tradition by saying that 
 there is a certain Begum known as Tamboli Begnrn 
 buried in the Khusru Bagh at Allahabad, which 
 name becoming corrupted into that of Stamboli 
 Begum meant the lady from Constantinople, and 
 gave rise to the tradition. The decorations that 
 adorn this building are highly imaginative. On 
 
144 
 
 different sides of the buildings are different pictures, 
 que scenes from nature and art represented. There 
 the lovely forest scenery with the birds of the Him- 
 alayan regions and the fierce beasts of the jungle 
 alternate with the willows and dragons of China, the 
 palm trees of Arabia, and luscious creepers bearing 
 grapes, vines, and other fruit trees of Hindustan. 
 On the pillars outside are to be found floriated 
 traceries giving images of luxuriant trees and 
 flowers reposing with a quite natural air. * 
 
 The house that goes by the name of Birbal, 
 one of the foremost of Akbar's Hindu grandees, 
 whose wit and wisdom delighted the emperor, has 
 at its back a large stable. The stone mangers 
 to take the gram from, and the stone rings to 
 fasten the ropes to, are yet in existence. North- 
 west of the Khas Mahal is a small mosque pro- 
 bably set apart for the ladies of the zenana, and 
 a set of chambers which served as a hospital. The 
 Panch Mahal which is a most curious structure is 
 to the east of it. It is a series of platforms, each 
 *6wer one being larger in size than the one above 
 it, and supported by rows of pillars. The pillars are 
 fifty-four in number, in the lowermost storey and 
 
 * Two of the inscriptions on the Khas Mehal have been translated 
 as follows: 'Th* Janitor of Paradise may see his face in thy chamber- 
 floor. ' * The dust of thy court is collyriuiu for the eyes of the heavenly 
 Hoor. ' 
 
145 
 
 they grow less and less in number till in the upper- 
 most storey the number is only four. All the pil- 
 lars are carved from top to bottom, and represent 
 all varieties of objects. The carvings are in such 
 handsome and delicate lines that they look nice in, 
 photographs, and they have been often drawn and 
 photographed. The stairs are rather steep, and one 
 has to ascend to the topmost storey by means of 
 zigzag steps that grow less and less in width as the 
 height is greater and greater. The first floor has 
 thirty-five columns, the next fifteen, and the next 
 eight. Each of these pillars represent an interesting 
 scene. At one place a man is plucking a fruit from 
 a tree, at another two elephants standing in front 
 of each other have joined their trunks. The Panch 
 Mahal is said to have been the place where the 
 maid servants and royal children had their quarters 
 temporarily, and where the emperor used to enjoy 
 the cool evening air and see the country around in 
 nights. The Panch Mahal has attracted the special 
 attention of the Archaeological Department, and since 
 the time of Lord Mayo, it has been repaired at an 
 enormous cost, and tracery restored as far as possi- 
 ble. North-east of the Panch Mahal is the Pachisi 
 Board which resembles the one of the Agra fort, 
 the only difference being that while the Agra one 
 is entirely of marble, the one at Fatehpur Sikri is of 
 red sandstone. To the north again of this building, 
 
146 
 
 are the buildings known as Ankh Michauli and 
 the Dewan-i-Khas. The former building is said to 
 be the hide-and-seek playing house of the emperor, 
 but on a careful examination of the surroundings 
 would seem to be either a treasury or a valuable re- 
 cord office. There are places for sentries all round, 
 and stone-doors which were closed up with heavy 
 padlocks clearly show that they were appropriated 
 to better purposes than what is generally ascribed to 
 them by tradition. Its immediate proximity to the 
 Dewani-Khas also suggests the idea, that it was in 
 some way connected with the Privy Council chamber. 
 There is a strong room in the centre with two other 
 rooms with verandahs on the north and south sides 
 of it. There is a pavilion near it overloaded with 
 the peculiarities of Jain architecture which sheltered 
 a Hindu teacher of Akbar. The ornamentation is 
 exactly of the style of the temples of Mount Abu 
 and Ahmedabad. The traceries and the carvings 
 are after the Buddhist sculptures, and many have 
 been the discussions as to what particular Buddhist 
 structure influenced the builders of Akbar's reign. 
 The Hindu teacher of Akbar used to instruct him 
 during the evening hours in the dogmas of the faith 
 and to enter into controversy with the teachers of 
 other faiths. 
 
 The Dewani-Khas is a building of peculiar and 
 curious construction. It is a very lofty building 
 
147 
 
 altogether open from floor to roof. There is a pillar 
 in the centre, having four causeways projecting 
 from the central point and going down to each of the 
 corners. Mr. Fergusson describes it as a square 
 building with a throne consisting of an enormous 
 flower-like bracket, supported on a richly-carved pil- 
 lar, a peristylar building called his office, very simi- 
 lar to the one he erected at Allahabad. The struc- 
 ture known as Dewani-Khas used to seat the em- 
 peror in the middle and four ministers in each of the 
 causeways, between whose conflicting counsels the 
 emperor used to hold the balance. Professor Max 
 Muller mentions this curious edifice as the scene of 
 the religious controversies of Akbar's court every 
 evening. There is a beautiful side gallery in this 
 building, and this seems to have been the place 
 named as Ibadat Khana by some writers as no other 
 edifice within the fortified walls answers at all to the 
 description given of it. 
 
 From the Dewani-Khas the way lies to the 
 Diwan-i-Am through a long colonade. The Hall of 
 Public Audience is a small hall with a wide veran- 
 dah. Just below is a court-yard paved with sand- 
 stone flags 360 ft. by 180 ft. and on all sides of this 
 court-yard are small chambers and cloisters which 
 used to accommodate the suitors who came there to 
 present petitions and file complaints. This court 
 of justice is partly in the open air, and the supreme 
 
148 
 
 court of judicature admitted the public to its pro- 
 ceedings. People flocked there in large numbers 
 to see the emperor dispensing justice, and the frank 
 and open way of Akbar, his ability and impartiality 
 in deciding causes, won the confidence and com- 
 manded the admiration of his subjects. 
 
 Leaving the grand enclosure of the palace walls, 
 the traveller has to go to some distance to the higher 
 parts of the rock for some other objects of interest. 
 There was a large lake in Akbar's time, now dried 
 
 o / 
 
 up, which lay to the north of the hills and which 
 was closed in by a huge embankment on one side 
 and a rancre of hills on the other. Thus was formed 
 
 O 
 
 a large sheet of water about six miles in length by 
 two in breadth which used to supply the palace 
 apartments on the ridge and the city belcw with its 
 gardens and dwelling-houses with plenty of water. 
 There were water works by means of which this 
 writer was brought to one place and distributed all 
 over. The water was raised from the lake by a 
 clever arrangement of wheels, brought into a series 
 of reservoirs, and then distributed by means of 
 conduit pipes to the different parts of the palace. 
 
 There is a gateway in Fatehpur Sikri known as 
 Hathi Pol, which is translated as Elephant gate and 
 which has a sublime beauty of its own in the 
 massiveness of its construction. The arch is 20 ft. 
 from the ground, and is formed by the trunks of two 
 
149 
 
 elephants joined together, the elephants being of 
 very large size, and placed one on each side of the 
 gateway. The heads of the elephants had been re- 
 moved by Anrnngzeb as he thought this particular 
 ornament to be peculiarly Hindu. The Hathi Pol 
 was considered by Akbar's courtiers to be a fitting 
 entrance for the palaces of a sublime monarch like 
 Akbar. The Sungin Burj which is in the vicinity 
 of this gateway, is said to be a splendid bastion 
 which is the remnant of some fortifications said to 
 have been commenced on a grand scale by Akbar, 
 but discontinued after a while as his spiritual teacher 
 Selim Chistl disapproved of them. 
 
 The Hathi Pol overlooks the Hiran Minar, 
 which means literally a tower for shooting antelopes. 
 It is about 70 ft. high, and its sides are studded with 
 imitations of elephant's tusks. Akbar used to enjoy 
 in a little sport from the top of this tower, and the 
 game were driven from all parts of country and kept 
 in enclosures here to be shot down by the imperial 
 musket. Akbar's fame as a hunter is high with 
 posterity, and he indulged in sport not only in this 
 effeminate way, but his favourite minister records 
 how he could hunt down tigers and wild boars with 
 spears and fire-arms, undergoing many weary jour- 
 neys on horse-back for the purpose. 
 
 Between the Sanginburj and the Hiran Minar 
 is the Kashmir serai, a large caravan serai, where 
 
150 
 
 resorted merchants from the most distant parts of 
 the empire and from the farthest ends of the civilized 
 globe. Here were exhibited for the emperor and 
 his nobles all articles for use and luxury then known 
 to civilized nations. 
 
 The following extracts from Fergusson would 
 conclude our description of Fatehpur bikri. " It is 
 however at Fatehpur Sikri that Akbar must be 
 judged of as a builder. During the whole of his 
 reign it was his favourite residence. He apparently 
 "was the first to occupy the spot and apparently the 
 last, at least to build there ; no single building being 
 identified as having been erected by any of his suc- 
 cessors. Akbar seems to have had no settled plan 
 when he commenced building there." " The richest, 
 the most beautiful, as well as the most characteristic 
 of all his buildings here are three small pavilions 
 said to have been erected to please and accommodate 
 his three favourite sultanas. They are small, but it 
 is impossible to conceive any thing so picturesque 
 in outline or any building carved and ornamented 
 to such an extent without the smallest approach to 
 being overdone or in bad taste." Again, "It was 
 left however for the Saracenic architects to get over 
 the difficulty of giving due size and dignity to the 
 portals of buildings. They placed their portals one 
 or three or five of very moderate dimensions at the 
 back of semi-dome. This last feature thus became 
 
151 
 
 the porch or portico, and its dimensions became those 
 of the portal wholly irrespective of the size of the 
 opening. No one, for instance looking at this gate- 
 way, can mistake that it is a doorway only which 
 are provided at its base. The semi-dome is the modu- 
 lus of the design and its scale that by which the 
 imagination measures its magnificence." He thus 
 sums up. " Taking it altogether this palace at 
 Fatebpur Sikri is a romance in stone such as few, 
 very few, are to be found anywhere ; and it is a 
 reflex of the mind of the great man who built it 
 more distinct than can easily be obtained from any 
 other source." 
 
AGRA AS IT IS. 
 
 The modern district of Agra lies between lat. 
 26 44' 30" and 27 24' N and between long. 
 77 28' and 78 53 '45" E. Its area is 1,850 
 square rniies, and it forms a district of the Agra 
 Division. On the north of it lies Muttra and Etah, 
 on the east Mainpuri and Etawah, on the south the 
 territories of Dholpur and Gwalior, and on the east 
 the state of Bharatpur. The greater portion of this 
 district lies on the right bank of the Jumna, and 
 the smaller portion on the left bank. The Chambal 
 forms the southern boundary to some distance, and 
 the Utangan passes through the heart of the portion 
 outside the Doab. The soil on the banks of the 
 Jumna up to some distance is intersected by deep 
 ravines, and one finds that this preeipitious tract 
 is almost entirely bare of vegetation. The greater 
 part of the district however is a rich plateau almost 
 level, and under ordinary circumstances produces 
 rich crops. The branches of the Ganges Canal water 
 the portion in the Doab and the Agra canal is uti- 
 lized for the same purposes in the northern pergan- 
 iiahs. The sandstone hills to be found near Fatehpur 
 Sikri and on the south-eastern borders of the district 
 
153 
 
 are offshoots from the Vindhyan ran ere which traverses 
 the whole of Central India. The crops usually raised 
 in this district are the usual kharif and rabi crops, or 
 the autumn and spring harvests. The first is sown 
 after the heavy monsoon rains usually at the end of 
 June, and is ready for harvesting by October. This 
 crop consists of the inferior food-grains and cereals. 
 The second is sown usually in November and reaped 
 in April, arid consist of the more valuable crops, such 
 as wheat, barley, oats, and other things. The same 
 soil is sometimes, but rarely, used for both the crops. 
 The Indian husbandman understands the principle 
 of rotation of crops and practises it sometimes, but 
 oftentimes he thinks that a single crop in the 
 year would best conduce to the soil being kept 
 in the highest state of efficiency. Besides these 
 principal crops a fair share of the cultivated land is 
 set apart to produce tobacco, indigo, sugarcane, 
 numerous kinds of vegetables, and the opium 
 plant. There are in this district 202,485 acres 
 of land which are so barren and has such physical 
 conditions that they cannot be cultivated. The 
 total area under cultivation is about 800,000 acres 
 as against 200,000 acres set apart for grazing pur- 
 poses or not otherwise cultivated though capable of 
 cultivation. The agricultural population is about 
 60 per cent, of the whole, and the cultivation of cot- 
 ton and of the superior kinds of cereals is continually 
 
154 
 
 on the increase. There has been a rise in the 
 wages and the prices of food-grains during the last 
 quarter of a century, the rise being about twenty- 
 five per cent. The cultivation in this district de- 
 pends mostly on natural rainfall, and there is felt 
 severe distress in seasons of draught. In 1783, 1813, 
 1819, 1838, 3861, 1868, and 1878 the population 
 suffered much by severe scarcity, and the Govern- 
 ment relief measures were intended not only for the 
 suffering people of this district, but also for the numer- 
 ous fugitives from the neighbouring Native states 
 who poured into it in search of employment. The 
 prices in these famine years rose to 13 or 14 seers 
 of inferior cereals to the rupee, and pressed very hard 
 on the labouring population. The tenants in most 
 cases possess the rights of occupancy, and are content 
 to follow their humble lot in obscurity. The trade of 
 the city of Agra is greatly facilitated by the means 
 of communication which link the several important 
 cities of Upper India, The East Indian Line passes 
 through it with three stations at Firozabad, Tundla, 
 and Burhan, and a branch from Tundla to Agra 
 which comes up to the Delhi Gate of Akbar's fort over 
 a bridge that belongs to the Rnjputana Malwa Rail- 
 way. The Rajputana line now worked by the B. B. 
 and C. I. Railway Company connects Agra with 
 Bharatpur, Ulwar, Jeypur, Ajmere, Marwar, Mount 
 Abu, Palampur, Ahinedabad, Baroda, Surat, Broach, 
 
155 
 
 and Bombay by the main line, and with Indore, Udey- 
 pur, Neemuch and Nasirabad by branches. The 
 metre gauge line branching off from Achnera connects 
 Agra with Muttra and with the Cawnpur- Achnera 
 Railway through Kasganj and Farrackabad to Cawn- 
 pur. The Indian Midland Railway, in which has been 
 incorporated the Scindia State Railway, connects 
 Agra with Dholpur, Gwalior, Jhansi, Bhopal, and at 
 Itarsi with the great system of the G. I. P. Railway. 
 The good metalled roads on all sides connect it with 
 Muttra, Aligarh, Cawnpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Gwalior, 
 Karauli and Bharatpur. Beside the ordinary cattle 
 markets in some considerable villages in the district, 
 there is held annually a large horse-fair at Batesar 
 which brings together, it is said, about two lacs of 
 
 DO' ' 
 
 human beings. The city of Agra is a large grain 
 and cotton mart, and there are many cotton screws 
 in the city and two in the district. The sugar of 
 Rohilkand, the cotton of the Rajputana plains, and 
 the wheat of the surrounding districts find a ready 
 market here. The especial manufactures of Agra 
 are beautiful hookka pipes, gold lace of all descrip- 
 tions, native shoes, inlaid work in marble, and car- 
 pets. There are workmen who produce the high- 
 est species of work in marble, and this finely-wrought 
 inlaid work is very largely appreciated by the 
 European visitors. The best carpets are those 
 obtainable from the Central Jail. The marble-work 
 
156 
 
 and the carpets of Agra have been awarded the high. 
 est prizes in all the great exhibitions of the world, 
 and are pronounced to be almost unrivalled by cri- 
 tics of standing in Europe. Sandstone is imported 
 in large quantities from Fatehpur Sikri, and, after 
 being hewn in Agra, are sent down the river by 
 boats. 
 
 The principal institutions of the modern city 
 are the civil, criminal, and revenue courts, Thorn ason 
 Hospital with the Lady Dufferin's Institution attach- 
 ed to it, the Agra College, the Roman Catholic 
 College and Convent, central prison, the barrack in 
 the Public Works Department style for the troops, 
 the churches of the numerous Protestant Non-con- 
 formist sects, and the beautiful hall built in Greek 
 style in memory of Lord Metcalfe, which serves to 
 the European population as a place for balls, amuse- 
 ments, and social re-unions. Agra is the head quarters 
 of a civil and sessions judge who has jurisdiction 
 also in Muttra. The courts of the Judge and Sub- 
 ordinate Judge of Agra are held in the same build- 
 ing in which the High Court used to hold its sit- 
 tings after its establishment in 1866 to the transfer 
 of the Court in 1869. The buildings which then 
 served for the district courts are now appropriated 
 for the use of the Court of Small Causes and the 
 Munsif s Court. There is an intelligent and well- 
 educated bar practising in the civil courts, consisting 
 
157 
 
 of barristers, pleaders of European extraction, 
 vakils of the High Court, and the ordinary quota 
 of District courts men. The principal members of 
 the bar have their chambers in a set of rooms which 
 formerly served for the offices of the Board of Re- 
 venue when the seat of Government was at Agra, but 
 which are now no longer required for the purpose. 
 The district of Agra is considered to be a heavy 
 sessions district, and some of the trials held in it 
 have been very interesting. The central prison is a 
 set of well-ventilated cells, surrounded by walls about 
 a mile and a half in circumference. It has an average 
 population of over two thousand prisoners a day 
 and lifers from other districts are brought here 
 before being sent over to the Andamans. It has an 
 interesting carpet manufactory which can be seen 
 by the permission of the officer in charge, and carpets 
 woven here adorn the floors not only of palatial re- 
 sidences in India, bat also the magnificent residences 
 of many of the principal noblemen and princes of 
 Europe. The Catholic College and Orphanage is 
 on the back of the central prison. It is an interest- 
 ing establishment containing the college and girls' 
 schools in large and commodious buildings with a 
 cathedral and an episcopal see attached. It is entire- 
 ly under the supervision of Jesuit fathers and nuns, 
 and teaches useful occupations, and opens up interest- 
 ing careers to many young boys and girls. There is a 
 
158 
 
 tradition that this establishment is one of consi- 
 derable antiquity, having been founded by Akbar. 
 Attached to it is a cemetery where the visitor will 
 find some very interesting mausoleums, the princi- 
 pal of them being the tombs of the French officers 
 of the Maharatta service, of Walter Eeinhardt, and 
 the Dyce-Sombre family which had a considerable 
 name in the history of local litigation. The Agra 
 College is a one storied building on a high plinth 
 with a passage in the middle, and sets of rooms on 
 either side of it Attached to the main building 
 are two wings, built almost in the same style, one 
 used as a science laboratory, and the other as a 
 gallery to hold large classes and for lectures on law. 
 The school buildings are immediately behind the 
 college, almost just finished. These owe their origin 
 to local effort and local munificence. The college 
 has a set of boarding houses attached to it, the finest 
 of which is the one built for the small community 
 of the Bhargavas by Munshi Nawal Kishore, C. I. E,, 
 and Lala Girdhari Lai, a gentleman of the bar with 
 considerable public spirit. The college is presided 
 over by a veteran educationist whose services are 
 lent by the Government, and who is assisted by two 
 junior European professors and three Masters of 
 Arts of the University of Calcutta, and produces 
 excellent results from year to year. Its committee 
 consists of some gentlemen of considerable local 
 
159 
 
 standing and personal experience, and its success 
 has been complimented upon by such high author- 
 ities as the Viceroy and the Lieutenant-Governor. 
 The St. John's College is a missionary institution 
 \vhich trains up native youths and the boys drafted 
 from the Secundra Orphanage. The Victoria Col- 
 lege owes its existence to the public spirit of the 
 late Hon'ble Pandit Ajudhia Nath, a native of this 
 city, who made his fortune at the Allahabad High 
 Court bar, and his brother, Pandit Jagannath. There 
 is also another Middle English School in the 
 very heart of the city, which is owned and very suc- 
 cessfully managed by Rai Bahadur Munshi Sheo 
 Narain, Secretary to the local municipality. The 
 medical establishments are many in this district. 
 The climate of Agra is extremely hot in summer, 
 and as cold as many large European cities in winter. 
 Its temperature varies from 40 in January to 115S 
 in June, but though owing to its proximity to many 
 sand}?' deserts it is very hot in summer, it is con- 
 sidered to be a very healthy place all through the 
 year. Life in the winter is delightful here, and in 
 the summer all activities are confined to the morn- 
 ings and evenings which are often pleasantly cool. 
 But during the mid-day when the golden orb of 
 heaven is ae its meridian height, and for some hours 
 late when its slanting rays are equally trying, all 
 activities are hushed, every means for artificially 
 
160 
 
 cooling the temperature of the rooms is resorted to, 
 and there is a feeling of listlessness and langour on 
 all its residents, and the calm repose of the streets is 
 hardly broken by the appearance of a single human 
 being. There are some beautiful passages in Hero 
 and Nymph by the Shakespeare of India the Sanskrit 
 poet Kalidas, and they beautifully describe the life 
 in an Indian city under the hottest rays of the 
 eastern sun. There are six charitable dispensaries 
 in this district, viz., four at Agra, one at Fatehpur 
 Sikri, and one at Firozabad. There is a leper 
 asylum and poor house too in Agra city. There 
 is a medical school attached to the Thomason 
 Hospital, where pupils are taught to a standard 
 of efficiency by some picked officers of the govern- 
 ment subordinate medical service, men who had 
 their training either in Calcutta or Lahore. The 
 telegraph office at Agra is a very large one, and 
 employs over a hundred signallers. Eight main 
 lines of telegraph connect it with Aligarh, Bharat- 
 pur, Cawnpur, Dholpur, Muttra, and three principal 
 lines of railways. The commercial quarter of Agra 
 is known as Belanganj. There are many Seths and 
 sowcars carrying on business with large Indian cities, 
 and the visitor w r ould find ample evidences of its 
 activity in the trade of cotton, grain, salt, stones, and 
 wool. The new water works which supply the city 
 with perpetual draughts of fresh water are to the 
 
161 
 
 north of Belanganj and are well worth a visit. 
 There are two massive engines and very interesting 
 tanks, exhibiting all the stages of the filtering pro- 
 cess. The principal hotels are the Lauries' Hotel, the 
 Northbrook Hotel, and the United Service Hotel. 
 The last two have been newly opened, and the form- 
 er was opened many years ago by Messrs. Laurie 
 and Staten, and is very largely resorted to by visit- 
 ors. I have heard from many respectable Euro- 
 pean travellers that the hotels, the Dak Bungalow, 
 and the Club at Agra are up to the mark of the 
 most respectable establishments in the East, while 
 they are more comfortable and considerably cheaper 
 than the hotels of Cairo. Agra is visited very large- 
 ly by travellers from Europe and America and from 
 all parts of India. Those from Lower Bengal most- 
 ly stop during their stay here with the Bengali 
 residents who are noted for their hospitality to 
 their countrymen at all times. The residents of 
 Agra who have some historic importance are the 
 Raja of Benares, descended from the historic Chait 
 Singh of Warren Hasting's time, Sir Raja Dinker 
 Rao, K. C.S.I., who was prime minister at Gwalior 
 at the time of the mutiny, and was nominated a 
 member of the Supreme Council. He has a house 
 and some property here, and stops either here or at 
 Allahabad. The family of Rao Jyotiprasad Khetri 
 of Barara, a grand commissariat contractor, whose 
 
162 
 
 name is prominently mentioned in Kaye's and Mal- 
 lesoirs Sepoy War, and several retired officers who 
 did good service daring the times of the mutiny. 
 The ^ity of Agra is still the second city in the 
 North- Western Provinces (not including Lucknow 
 in Oudh ) in size and importance. It is 841 miles 
 by rail from Calcutta, 139 miles from Delhi, 277 
 miles from Allahabad, and about a 1,000 miles 
 from Bombay. The representatives of the chief 
 hotels meet the traveller at the railway station. 
 The population of Agra, including the suburbs of 
 Shahganj and Tajganj, comes up to 1,66,000 souls. 
 The ordinary adrninistrationo staff consists of four 
 covenanted officers, five uncovenanted officers of the 
 Civil Service, and the usual staff of medical, fiscal 
 and constabulary establishments. 
 
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