religion from attempting sculpture, as understood in Europe, succeeded
in investing their great architectural monuments with an extraordinary
personal character. There is a wonderful personality in the dignity and
greatness of Akbar's tomb; we see the scholar and the polished courtier
in Itmad-ud-daulah's. But the Taj carries this idea of personality
further than had been attempted in any of the Mogul monuments; it
represents in art the highest development towards individualism,
the struggle against the restraints of ritualism and dogma, which
Akbar initiated in religion.

Every one who has seen the Taj must have felt that there is something
in it, difficult to define or analyze, which differentiates it from
all other buildings in the world. Sir Edwin Arnold has struck the
true note of criticism in the following lines:--

"Not Architecture! as all others are,
But the proud passion of an Emperor's love
Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars
With body of beauty shrining soul and thought;
... As when some face
Divinely fair unveils before our eyes--
Some woman beautiful unspeakably--
And the blood quickens, and the spirit leaps,
And will to worship bends the half-yielded knees,
While breath forgets to breathe. So is the Taj!"

This is not a mere flight of poetic fancy, but a deep and true
interpretation of the meaning of the Taj. What were the thoughts
of the designers, and of Shah Jahan himself, when they resolved to
raise a monument of eternal love to the Crown of the Palace--Taj
Mahal? Surely not only of a mausoleum--a sepulchre fashioned after
ordinary architectural canons, but of an architectonic ideal,
symbolical of her womanly grace and beauty. Those critics who have
objected to the effeminacy of the architecture unconsciously pay the
highest tribute to the genius of the builders. The Taj was meant to
be feminine. The whole conception, and every line and detail of it,
express the intention of the designers. It is Mumtaz Mahal herself,
radiant in her youthful beauty, who still lingers on the banks of
the shining Jumna, at early morn, in the glowing midday sun, or in
the silver moonlight. Or rather, we should say, it conveys a more
abstract thought; it is India's noble tribute to the grace of Indian
womanhood--the Venus de Milo of the East.

Bearing this in mind, we can understand how foolish it is to formulate
criticisms of the Taj based on ordi