THE TAJ MAHAL

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2568, 31 July 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE TAJ MAHAL

THE MOST WONDERFUL BUILDING , , . (By ’ Outside • tliocity, ofwigr,a, along the Strand , Road,.. lies the Taj Mahal—tho most wonderful building ever constructed bv human hands—in picturesque repose oil the bank of tho Jumna. The Taj was built by Shah, Jachan as a mausoleum in honor of his beloved wife, Arjamand Banu Begum, better known in India as Mumtaz Hahal. The plans of the tomb were prepared by a Venetian, who undertook to build it at a cost of 30,000,000 rupees. He, however, died during its construction, and the work was finished by Bystantine Turk, at a cost of 41,148,826 rupees. The collection of materials —the marble and sandstone, and the jewels —which came, as the poet says “bv toiling men and strain-ing-battle over a thousand wastes, a thousand hills,” and the building of the tomb took seventeen years, the last inscription on the building being 1648. The labor is said to have been all forced, and little or 'no payment given to the 20,000 odd workmen, who were occupied ,in building this wonderful pilo. The entrance to the Taj grounds is indeed very pretty. It consists of a huge building with four beautiful kiosks and slender, graceful, scaly columns tapering high above the gates. Between the ''columns at each end are eleven domelets and eleven spirelets, in which, together with the great arches, each 87 feet high, are to be found seven different styles of architecture. Though this beautiful building is constructed of black and white marble few visitors stay. to, examine it closely, but pass on to the inner gate, for the Taj is within. '{■ The moment the visitor passes tho inner gate he is surprised. Instead of seeing a great building close at hand, whose grandeur strikes him with astonishment, he finds himself in a long narrow garden walled in by trees. The centre of the walk is composed of shrubs set in a marble reservoir filled with water, in which fish swim about, and outside the pavement, which is beautifullv tesselated run two rows of cypress trees, the Semitic emblem of dentil—the entrance to darkness and oblivion. So strange is tho arrangement of this walk that its perspective makes the Taj look as if it were a mile away, where, as in reality, it is not more than a quarter. Let the visitor stand half way up the avenue, and, forgetting the dark, gloomy cypress, look at the Taj, not as a tomb, but as a building to be thought out and he will marvel to think that human hands constructed it. ~ , At the end of tho avenue wide shallow' steps lead lip to a • low terrace of red-sandstone from which rises a smaller white marble platform about eighteen feef high, from the four corners of which spring slender minarets, cahed “The Sentinels.” :. In the centre of this platform stands the Taj-- ..The whole of this exquisite building is of pure white marble and its snowy, surface is relieved by beautiful mosaics in oonelian, jasper, agate, with sculptured vases, flowers, and lines of tho most delicate lace-work in marble . A great pure white dome rises Detween two lesser domes among its attendant minarets to a height of 243 feet from the base which is 186 feet square. It is square but for the,corners facing.the sentinels which have been cut- off;' giving it four great and four lesser sides. The delicate curves of the building, its lacework, its soft flowing lines, its exqjuisite ornamentation, seem singularly appropriate for tho tomb of a lovely and much loved queen. The entrance bears the date, A.H. 1057. (A.D. 1648.) marking the completion of the building. The arches are covered with inscriptions in black marble in tho Toghra character, taken from the Koran, appropriate to mourning and spiritual nope. Passing through the arch the visitor enters a large chamber in which there is a stairway leading down into a square hall in‘tho centre of which are the tombs, containing the remains of Shah Jehan and his wife Mumtaz Mah-al. These tombs are hewn out of white marble, and covered with most exquisite inlaid work. • Both tombs have inscriptions on them in tho usual Persian style; and curious to note among tho titles recited on that of Shah Jehan is one “Sahib-i-Oirian II.” This points to tho fact that he was tho first descendant of Timur, who was born under the same stars as his ancestor . The Taj contains four of theso groat chambers and they are connected by a corridor which runs round the interior of tho building. The most elaborate and highly finished work of all, is to be seen on tho cenotaphs of Shah Johan and his wifo, which aro in a large octagonal domed chamber over the hall where the .tombs are. The cenotaphs are enclosed by an octagonal screen of white marble, about .six feet high and so perfect is its finish that it resembles fine point-face turned to stone. This chamber has a wonderful echo, tho effect of which is charming. It floats and soars overhead gradually fading away so slowly that you think you hear it after it has gone. On both sides of the terrace which forms the base of the Taj there is a building, each standing on a red sandstone basement and decorated like ’ the Taj, with colored stones., They are exactly alike, and prove the great desire for symmetry and proportion that prevailed in those times. The one on the western side is, a Mosque, and the other on tho eastern side is called tho Jawab. They each consist of a double row of chambers, six in all, which communicate with one another by arched doorways. Besides three large domes and four small ones which constitute each building, a graceful colonnade. projects from them at cither side, terminating in an octagonal pavilion of two stories, surmounted by a domed cupola resting lightly on the graceful pillars. Tho .Taj, to be appreciated, must be seen, for no words can give any idea of tho spoil and beauty it possesses. There is a secret in its fascination which is not easily explained. You see it with tho heart before the eyes have,time to gazo. It appeals to the fancy, and has ah individuality of loveliness, a peculiar beauty, an indefinable tinge of evanescence, which seems to remove it far from the category of ordinary architectural works. Seen in tho moonlight, it is a sight nevof to be forgotten. It appears as if a dome of uuro snow had fallen from the sky, and there became crystallised for ever. Its droamy loveliness is intoxicating to gazo upon. The sight causes tho blood to tingle through the body, and as a breath of wind makes its reflected grandeur on the water tremble for a moment, it seems' as'if it were a living creature, of another world. ,

THE BERLIN POOR.

A SQUALID COMMUNITY.

(“Harper’s Magazine.”)

That there are no poor in Berlin is easib- said, so swept so set to rights, uppoars the life of the people. Tho average Prussian will assure you that his is the most democratic country in the world. He will tell you that the State serves every man in it; that it meets the problem of the unemployed with municipal- labor bureaux, which exchange lists twice a week; that it has labor colonies, which teach tho vagrant to be a useful, self-respecting citizen ; that it takes over and subsidises any investigation privately advanced which looks to it for the welfare of tho poor; that the Imperial insurance provides for the sick and aged; that the system of outdoor relief iu Germany is the best in the world ; that tho police condemn insanitary buildings. He will point to the technical high schools and continuation schools for apprentices; to the school doctor and the feeding of unnourished children ; to the 2% cent, faro; to the free baths: to the working men’s days at the theatres, granted By order of his Majesty; to the guides provided at a minimum rate for the galleries; and to many similar advantages—above all, to that mass of “legislative protection for the worker,” initiated by Bismarck, part of —The Gigantic Scheme of Germany’s Great Statesmen—for establishing an efficient State, before which Europe should tremble.

But if Germany has, as it sometimes seems, studied everything that can be studied in the social order for the next twenty years'; 'if she has investigated everything, written everything in exhaustive books, and then organised the results into bureaux and embodied some of them into laws, what makes she, with all this scholarly assault? Let anyone who thinks that there are no unemployed in Germany stand some evening outside one of the Berlin Shelters for the Homeless, and watch the 700 men and the 150 women going in. “so clean, so polite along;” or let him watch the 3500 coming out of the municipal night shelter some morning, 600,000 a year, seeking these refuges at night in one city alone, in a country where professional vagabondage is -unished sternly, and begging is a penal offence. Poverty is guarded in Berlin, secret, hidden; it goes softly. It is clean and neatly clothed. Only the Salvation Army knows where it is; or the “Sickness Insurance of tho Apothecaries, Merchants. and Tradespeople,” or the “Bureau for the Redress of Private Griefs,” or some other organisations with-! tho highly comprehensive names, dear ,te the German mind. » There are no noor in Berlin like the London poor. Germany is a new country, so strangely both old and new, but bom industrially in 1871, formerly overrun by every nation in Europe, her mines never carefully worked, her land untilled, her undeveloped. Sho is in what Prince lvropatkin-calls, in a recent book, “a state of flight”— an industrial -awakening protected by a high tariff, and “begun with the improved machinery and technical education which England attained only after a century of groping experimentation.”

Germany has not the problems of an old country, nor' has she the immigration complicating every question, as England and America have. But shd has poverty common as sunlight. —All the Horrors of Sweating and Homework — in a clothing industry tlio greatest in Europe; long hours, where every girl in the department stores works until eight o’clock; the eight-hour day in perhaps only one-tenth of her industries, and then it is a day without pause; great misery in many employments. and a minimum living wage in almost all, especially among women, fainting after work; deformity so common as to appeal to an American; and the ungarded, uncherished childhood of the poor.