First published in Islamic Culture, vol. 26, no. 1. 1952. pp. 132-44
Under the influence of nineteenth-century European classicism we have long confined our appreciation of Mughal art to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, i.e., to the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir. Shahjahan and grudgingly also to Aurangzeb. Whatever belonged to a later period, was dismissed as decadent. Since, the concepts and ideals of art history have become more comprehensive. We have learnt to understand not only static forms expressing a quiet and well balanced, never disturbed harmony, but also dynamic types trying to express tensions and high-strung emotions, releasing them in complicated rhythms suggesting the never completed growth of life, not balanced, but striving towards a merely felt or indicated higher harmony in the life divine. The first has been called the classic or Apollinic ideal, the second the romantic or Dionysiac. Of the latter, two kinds have been distinguished, the grand style, majestic, tragic, sometimes even pompous, and the light style, playful, musical, dancing, even frivolous; and for them the terms Baroque and Rococo have been adopted which at first had been applied as mere deprecative names, to the post-Renaissance styles of sixteenth-seventeenth, respectively seventeenth-eighteenth century Europe [1]. However, these style types are not peculiarities of European art; they represent the characteristic phases of all late styles in all countries and in all ages, and they cover also the hitherto neglected art and of its Hindu branch styles.
When we realise that the Baroque and Rococo phases of an art do not mean a degeneration, but a shifting of the aesthetic accent from a quiet and static to an emotional and dynamic ideal, we can no more treat Mughal and post-Mughal art subsequent to the reign of Shahjahan as a degeneration. We must rather try to understand the change of its ideals, and the social and psychological causes of this change, i.e., the progressing Indianisation of Mughal society, the disintegration of the empire into a loose conglomeration of semi-independent aristocratic families, and the growing insecurity of life leading to a correspondingly intensified enjoyment of its pleasures, however with an underlying anxiety, an awareness of the transitoriness and vanity of these very enjoyments [2]. Likewise we find the two phases, the grand style from the later reign of Shahjahan to that of Farrukhsiyar when court etiquette and an increasingly militarised administration had to emphasise the personal authority not only of the emperor, but also of his nawabs; and a playful frivolous style evolving under Muhammad Shah and Ahmad Shah and taken over by the various succeeding principalities. And it is interesting to observe that this last phase of genuine Mughal art again became the ‘simple' foundation of another semi-Hindu style-cycle, most involved and full of tension and emotion, though no more than its counterpart in the last pre-Muslim Hindu art of the eleventh-thirteenth centuries [3].
The two key monuments of the transition between the last phase of the genuine Mughal architecture and the all-Indian court style evolving from it during the subsequent hundred years are Sardar Jang's mausoleum and the Qudsia Bagh at Delhi. But although the first is the more impressive, more solidly built and much better preserved monument. For art history the poor ruins of the Qudsia Bagh are of much greater interest. Safdar Jang, though a most vain and selfish politician, was anyhow the scion of an old Persian family firmly established in Mughal hierarchy and therefore susceptible to the past glories of an empire then sinking into its grave. His mausoleum, therefore, gives expression on antiquarian effort to revive the tradition of Central Asian mausoleums, from the mausoleum of Humayun to the Taj Mahal and the Bibi-ka-Rauda. As such it is a dismal failure. notwithstanding the innumerable beautiful details of its decoration Qudsia Begum, on the other hand has been low-born dancing girl before she was raised to short lived position of power and splendour by the coincidence of circumstances and her garden palace was an elegant pleasure house, embodying the latest and boldest fashions of the day in order to serve for a fast life of reckless luxury and amusement. Whereas Safdarjung’s mausoleum never could be more than a half-hearted precursor of the architecture of Oudh under Shuja-ud-daula and Asaf-ud-daula, the Qudsia Bagh is for us the great link between the Mughal and post-Mughal art especially such as the latter developed in Rajputana, at the Sikh court of Lahore and in the Maratha states.
At present the Qudsia Bagh [4] forms a modern public park north of the Kashmir Gate of Delhi, in which only a handful of pitiable ruins, the old entrance gateway and a mosque, half-hidden behind shrubberies, and the exterior wall of the northern baradari, now disfigured by modern enlargements, testify to its past glory. And yet it was destroyed only in recent times, so that we are fortunately in possession of a detailed view of the Northeast Corner of Cotsea Bhaugh, on the River Jamana' by the well-known British artists Thomas and William Daniell [5]. Up to the siege of Delhi in AD 1857 the building was still more or less intact. In AH 1249 (AD 1833-4) Bahadur Shah II had its mosque repaired [6]. But when General Nicholson prepared his decisive attack on the Water Bastion and the Kashmir Gate, two batteries of six 18-pounders and ten mortars were lodged behind its walls, the fine garden of lemon and orange trees was cut down, and embrasures were broken into the southern enclosure, and in the ensuing artillery attack the building was ruined. Even in the 1870s most of the garden palace was still discernible, the enclosure, the servant quarters, two baradaris, the mosque and the water-works[7]. But early in the twentieth century most of it had already been sloped [8]. And only one corner tower, part of the northern façade (transformed into a bungalow) and the mosque at the south-eastern corner can still be seen.
Once, however, it must have been a most impressive block of buildings, more than 1,000 ft. long, several hundred feet broad, and three storeys high. The western façade had two small corner towers and a central gateway. The latter, 35 ft. high, 74 ft. long and 55 ft. wide, is rather a heavy building with several poorly lighted central vaults, once separated by a partition wall, and a series of smaller rooms and balcony niches leading up to the roof. On the inner side this façade was lined by rows of cells. In the centre of the northern (and southern) sides, there were baradaris, 39 ft. long and 20 ft. wide, with three open arches going onto the garden, standing on terraces 5 ft. high. In the south-western and north-western extremities, near the entrance, there were two blocks of buildings, mainly for the servants, kitchen, etc. 100 ft. wide and 500ft.long, enclosing two courts. In front of the exterior gate there was a sort of bazaar. The eastern half of the compound was occupied by the garden proper and its famous water-works. It must have contained the residential pavilions of the Begum, though hardly anything is known about this more intimate and costly decorated part of the Qudsia Bagh. On the riverside it was hidden behind a façade with two octagonal pavilions and three jharokhas looking over the water. The mosque seems to have been outside the enclosure, but adjoining. It’s now open court measures 86 x 28 ft., with an ablution tank almost 32 ft. long and 27 ft 10 inches broad. West of it the mosque proper stands on a platform, 3 ?t high and consists of three domed compartments forming a praying chamber 68 ft. Long and 33 ft. 10 inches deep. In its northern wall there is a marble slab with Bahadur Shah II's inscription (dated) AH 1249. Adjoining the northern side, there are some rooms, which apparently served as a habitation for the mullah. All this was constructed in bricks, but covered with very solid and fine plaster, except for some occasional finials of red sand-stone, and almost gaudily painted in gilt.
The decoration of the Qudsia Bagh was indeed a true expression of the taste and the habits of its builder and occupant. Udham Bai [9] was a low-class dancing girl who had been introduced to the 'gay emperor' by Khadija Khanum, the daughter of Amin Khan. For a short time she became Muhammad Shah's favourite and bore him a son. But soon her vulgar ways aroused his displeasure, and she sank into obscurity, and might have been forgotten forever if the times had been different. For in an age when the empire was fast moving to its final disintegration, the selfish nobles in power preferred an emperor whose character would not hinder them from looting their last remains of the imperial glory.
In her misery Udham Bai had secretly become the mistress of Jawed Khan, the head eunuch of the imperial zenana. When Muhammad Shah died in ad 1748, Jawed Khan helped her son to the throne as Ahmad Shah. And he proved to be exactly what the nobles had desired for, a young man who never cared about the government, but spent his time in the zenana with the various concubines procured by the eunuch, with dancing girls and the disreputable relatives of Udham Bai, pimps, male dancers, and minstrels. Now the dancing girl was empress-mother, the "Hazrat Bai-ji Sahiba', the "Sahib-ji Sahiba on Whom be Peace’, the 'Parent of the Pure', the 'Lady of the Age', the 'Nawab Qudsia Begum’ the ‘Qibla-i "Alam'. She was now a mansabdar of 50,000, a rank much higher than the highest members of the dynasty had ever occupied in the golden days of the Mughal empire, and her brother Man Singh, a disreputable vagabond, was raised to the princely rank of 6,000, whereas the proud and high-born widows of Muhammad Shah, Malika-az-Zamani and Sahiba-Mahal, were kept, in humiliation and abject poverty. But even those fabulous revenues did not suffice for the prodigality of the ex-dancing girl and her clique. True, she was kind to Muhammad Shah's children and also lavishly helped people for whom she felt some gratitude. But most of the money was squandered senselessly, on her last birthday party in AD 1754 when she spent 20 million rupees.
But nobody cared from where the money came. The government was bankrupt. The empire existed merely in name. The governors of the provinces had ceased to send tribute. The districts round the capital were plundered to the last. The rebels fortified their towns and villages and expelled the imperial tax collectors. And at last they were taken under the custody of the Jats, the Marathas, the Bangash and Rohilla Afghans, or the various nobles. There was no regular administration. The city and its neighbourhood was divided into a number of rival aristocratic camps, and the imperial durbar a pretext for obtaining a legal title for further looting and interference.
Bahadur Khan Jawed Khan, now a mansabdar of 6,000, cashed immense bribes as darogha of the Diwan-i-Khass, and the only person who had always access to the zenana, to the emperor and his mother. This illiterate but unscrupulous man soon came to be so hated by the other nobles that at last he was murdered. His principal opponent was the wazir Safdar Jang, all-powerful as commander-in-chief of the troops (i.e., his own troops) and Nawab over the rich province of Oudh, and yet powerless because of his frequent absence from Delhi and his inability to obtain access to the Emperor in the zenana. This brutal, vain and often foolish man was hardly less hated than the greedy eunuch. And against both were played out Ghazi-ud-din, son of Asaf-Jah Nizam-ul-Mulk, Intizam-ud-daula, son of the wazir Qamar-ud-din, and Imad-ul-Mulk.
The imperial guards were never paid. They mutinied and insulted Qudsia Begum and her eunuch paramour with most disgraceful practical jokes, and had at last to be disbanded. With this the latent conflict between the nobles developed into a civil war, into which first the Jats, then the Marathas were drawn. First, Jawed Khan was trapped and murdered by Safdar Jang in AD 1752, and the Emperor made a virtual prisoner. The next year Safdar Jang was expelled by a conspiracy of nobles with the help of the Jats. Delhi was looted by the latter, but Ahmad Shah's cowardice prevented an imperial victory. Thereon Imad-ul-Mulk summoned the Marathas under Malhar Rao Holkar who had just made peace with Madho Singh of Jaipur, arrested Ahmad Shah and his mother and put Alamgir ll on the throne. In a litter Qudsia Begum, now again mere Udham Bai, and her son were brought into a prison and later strangled.
Very few monuments give witness to this short and reckless period
Safdar Jang's mausoleum has already been mentioned. Ahmed Shah is credited with the poor Chobi Masjid (AD 1750) in the Red Fort [10]. Jawed Khan erected the petty and cramped Sonehri Masjid (AD 1751) [11] with its gill domes, in the Chandni Chowk. Qudsia Begum built the other Sonehri Masjid (also AD 1751), southwest of the Fort, just beyond its moat, a small, but much better building than its namesake in the bazaar. But her chief monument is the Qudsia Bagh. It is but natural that she wanted to have her own palace. Her actual power was even greater than that of the Emperor, but this power rested on two pillars, i.e., that Ahmad Shah possessed all the paraphernalia of power, and yet was never interested in using it. And as the Emperor's passions were absorbed by his zenana, she was obliged to leave this for the imperial amusements, not to speak of the other rightful occupants whom she could humiliate, but not expel.
Thus the Qudsia Bagh became her home, vast enough to make it an artificial paradise, and strong enough to keep misery, insecurity and unrest of the time outside its mighty walls. Itsoutlayhas already been described. It now remains for us to study its decoration such as can be reconstructed from the fragments and old illustrations left.
As already mentioned, this decoration was executed mainly in painted plaster. The chief reason for this could have been lack of fund, for Qudsia Begum, like her contemporaries, squandered money, even at the cost of the last remnants of the state. And we must not believe that the Qudsia Bagh was not a most luxurious palace during the years when it was occupied. For if there were no ceilings of goldsheet or marble walls inlaid with agate, malachite, turquoise, etc., the display of silk. Gold embroideries, etc. at this time was much more ostentatious than in the seventeenth century. The difference was due to other reasons. Within the shortest time the most pompous palace had to be conjured up and with cheap, but skilfully worked materials surely quicker and more impressive results could be obtained. Whether the splendour would last this question was not of much interest. True, Safdar Jang had not followed this principle; but his mausoleum was to be a house for eternity, and he could command the rich resources of Oudh; but even he could afford only red sand-stone and stucco, and white marble merely for his cenotaph. And for the Sonehri Masjid also Qudsia Begun had used red sandstone. But a palace was neither a mosque nor a tomb. In those days when the authority of the imperial court extended hardly beyond the surrounding district, it was practically impossible to get marble either from Alwar or from Makran and even the red sandstone was available only in limited quantities. But there existed no such limitations with regard to brick and plaster and well-trained artisans could be had in any number and at cheap rales, though the emigration of unemployed artists from Delhi to Faizabad, Jaipur, Bikaner, Jodhpur, etc. had already set in. Thus, rich stucco modelling, polishing and painting could make good for the cheapness of the material. And even more the novelty of forms and the audacity of new experiments could amaze the visitor.
However, this novel art was not new as such; for its first stages go back to the reigns of Aurangzeb, even of Shahjahan. But what then had been no more than occasional experiments, now became the rule. The principal tendencies may be defined as follows: most of the old architectural and ornamental forms had become so worn out that they lost all direct appeal; they did not disappear, but were reduced to mere basic elements for new combinations of the most varied type. In the simplest case the combinations consisted in a more or less numerous reduplication, in the extreme case in the complete fusion of older forms into new ones. Likewise were the straight lines superseded by broken and curved, i.e., dynamic lines, the flat forms by rounded ones, the simple by involved types. This same ideal was fulfilled by a dynamic organisation, a rhythm not only of alternating big and small forms, but also of a slow but well-defined intensification and relaxation of accent. On the other hand new forms were developed by the introduction of a new naturalism, a transformation of most architectural forms into vegetal, especially flower motifs of fundamentally Hindu character, sometimes treated in quite a symmetrical and realistic manner. This meant an exuberance which first created a rather heavy effect; but as a further reaction the individual forms were so stretched and slimmed and subordinated to coordinating key motifs that the eventual effect was one of gay lightness.
It is not quite easy to exemplify these various tendencies for the same basic forms were subjected now to this, now to that evolution, resulting in quite different new types; and many of the new forms were the product of a fusion of quite a number of originally different prototypes.
The vast exterior wall, only rarely broken by windows or jharokhas was organised by a system of alternating big and small blind arches. This arrangement had been known already in Akbar's time. However, its rhythm had now become more complicated, ogival, pointed, keel and multi-scalloped arches being used, or plain panels, blind arches filled with rectangular blind windows or small jharokhas, arches rising from relaxing plain pilasters and others resting on rich half-columns, the size changing not in simple interrelations, but in a slowly intensified or relaxing rhythm. And all this, again kept together by long plinths and friezes of lotus petals or a broad cornice supported by ‘stalactites'[12]. More accentuated parts, such as gateways, niches, bays and balconies were framed between oblong panels such as the Persian and the earlier Mughal architecture had once borne the eulogistic inscriptions of Quranic quotations; but now the inscriptions disappeared, the panels were often reduced to miniature size [13] and even led round arches in a continuous band.
Since Aurangzeb the corners of mosques, entrance buildings, etc., were flanked by cannellated quoin pilasters capped by a flower-like top-platform[14] a motif first developed in the architecture of the Deccan sultanates[15]. They are to be found also at the mosque of the Qudsia Bagh. But those flanking the entrance gateway of the palace have been transformed into gigantic and rather heavy round lotus pillars, under the influence of the then current type of bellied lotus columns. The kanjuras on top of the mosque are unusually massive, but otherwise not exceptional. But those on top of the entrance to the Qudsia Bagh have undergone an amazing transformation. Their profile has been turned, as on a lathe, into the round, resulting in what might be described as a combination of a lotus column basis, capital and small lotus cupola, or like a lotus dome on its drum of lotus petals squeezed together as eventually to resemble a sort of flower pot [16]. The cornice has been almost reverted. Formerly the sloping pent-roof supported by brackets had been its chief characteristic. Now this has become a horizontal balcony platform resting on an impressive system of stalactites (a return to the Persian order still common in the Punjab under Aurangzeb); and one step further even this stalactite system is discarded in favour of a simple concave projection, now without any platform or pent-roof on top.
Columns and arches have not basically changed, but have become much richer. The columns are of the bellied lotus type developed in Aurangzeb's time, very heavy where accentuated, slim and elegant in more involved settings. They are now cannellated (or better bundled) and scaled (i.e. covered with small lotus petals, as the colours prove), and correspondingly the arch has been duplicated and triplicated and is likewise scaled. Its curve has become much more complicated. Simple keel, pointed and ogival forms are not absent but tum up only as parts of richer combinations Generally the scalloped arch is therule,often still of the type common under Shahjahan and Aurangzeb though enriched by single leaflets growing from it, and rich, symmetrical and half-naturalistic flowers on top. Sometimes, however, it is endowed with a fringe of diminutive petals which can likewise be traced also along the borders of rectangular panels. This petal fringe is a very old Indian ornament, in evidence already in later Gupta temples. In the nineteenth century it became almost the rule. However, where the arch continues to be of simple structure, its outlines become complicated, the scallops are of varying size and curve, depressed and high scallops alternating with others so diminutive as to be hardly more than incisions. The depressed arch, plain or scalloped, represents a new development, reflecting the curve of the bangaldar roof with which it is now almost fused. This entails another change, the transformation of the crowning flower growing from the top point of the arch into a broad leaf winding up from beneath the centre of the depressed arch. Finally, the scalloped arch also turns up framed by a simple architectural frieze with miniature panels such as formerly had framed only the rectangle enclosing the arch and its spandrels
Likewise has the basis of the arch undergone an incisive alteration. This had begun already under Aurangzeb. Where in an arcade two arches met on top of a pillar, an empty space was left between them. This space was now enlarged by interposing, between the capital and the arches, diminutive brackets of the Hindu type common in Akbar's and Jahangir's buildings, and filling the interstices with the traditional Mughal flower vase. As those brackets often were of a vegetal character, already in Shahjahan's time a fusion set in of all these varied elements into one set of leaf-and-scroll-work often ending in closed lotus buds [17]. However, these forms were not fixed earlier than the beginning of the nineteenth century, and until then we could find all the variations between individual lateral or central leaf scrolls [18] or both leaf types combined, or the scrolls framing lotus rosettes and half roundels, with the lotus or other bosses or without them, or all this reduced to a repetition of the lotus capital.
But all this represents no more than the basic evolutions. For the arch was further developed in the direction of both its outer and inner side. In the first case it was combined with the bangaldar roof and the lotus dome, executed merely in relic, not in genuine structure, into a new unit. The bangaldar roof was reduced to a mere indication of a pent-roof or cornice following the outline of the depressed arch. And again the lotus dome was depressed and dragged down so as to form a mere bulbous roof on top of that curved arch cornice. And at last the dome was likewise reduced to a mere roof indication on the double lotus drum now surviving as almost the only conspicuous detail of the whole, now completely worn-off set. The first stage of this development we can trace in the Moti Masjid of Delhi Fort where it is combined with flanking domes and this combination with the domes was later to fuse into the broken bangaldar roof type. Then this motifs recurs in the decoration of the baradaris on the north (and south) sides of the Qudsia Bagh. But first in the entrance building of the latter we find it in a definite pure form next in SafdarJang’s mausoleum and at last in the architecture of Faidabad (unclear). Lucknow, Jaipur etc. In later times the process of fusion and variation went even further when the depressed scalloped arch. For thereon first also the pent-roof cornice and next remnants of the dome became scalloped, and eventually the dome transformed itself into a mere second storey of lotus petals crowning those of its former drum.
On the other hand the arch fused with the niche and the interior cupola-ceiling. The first step was the breaking-up of the simple many-scalloped arch into several parallel arches such as could be seen first in the Rang Mahal of Delhi Fort, and then, already more developed in the Taj-ul-Masjid south of the Red Fort (built by Zinat-un-Nisa Begum). This development was facilitated by the common use of red sandstone slabs which were generally traded in certain standard strengths. In the mosque of the Qudsia Bagh the next stage is reached by connecting these arches by a concave 'network ceiling' of simplified stalactite or bandrum design. The other development converging on the first we find e.g. in the Patthar Masjid at Srinagar (by Nurjahan) and in the gateways of Delhi City. Inside the exterior arch is a rounded niche into the back of which the interior arch is broken, whereas the other windows and gates inside the now no more so deep niche have disappeared. Already in the Patthar Masjid both are connected by the elaborate vault network evolved from the Persian stalactites. In the gateway of the Qudsia Bagh we still find the older type, a simple arch framed by a scalloped arch. In the mosque the exterior and interior arches are scalloped, but the inner arch is duplicated and interconnected by a concave network and the niche between them has been covered with a most complicated network of the details of which it is difficult to say how far they still represent stalactites or are a mere diminutive repetition of the blind-arch decoration of the great palace enclosure.
This evolution of the niche-arch is reflected again on the cupola ceilings of the interior of the mosque. The arches no more support a system of squinches and of a drum bearing the cupola, but are broken into the latter in the same way as the just discussed inner arches of the niches fitted into the network of the latter. On the other hand the exterior lotus dome is now mirrored in the interior ceiling. The centre of the ceiling has become a gigantic flower of lotus leaves. Such ceilings are already found in Aurangzeb's buildings, where, however, plantain leaves were preferred, as also in other places [19]. In the Qudsia Bagh the development is led even one step further, in so far as in the centre also the negative of the exterior lotus knob on top [20] is reproduced. This forms the transition to the beautiful ceiling decorations which we later on find in the interior of Safdar Jang's mausoleum, at Lucknow, Jaipur, etc.
On the river facade of the Qudsia Bagh, now destroyed, other interesting form developments can be observed. The towers there have been broken up into a delicate system of jali windows, jali wall panels and jali balconies resting on a frieze of gigantic lotus petals, and interlinked by a system of lotus columns designed like Hindu flower wreaths where flower is inserted in flower over flower. These slim lotus columns again present a revival of an old moti? of Hindu architecture common from late Gupta to Gahadawala and Vaghela times. The windows of the lower storey merely repeat a typealreadyknown in Shahjahan's time. But the balconies of the upper storey show new developments. They rest on gigantic, stylised lotus flowers, a motif known already in at least fourteenth-fifteenth century Jain architecture, though not yet fully developed. The slim columns look like lotus stalks, the roof is a combination of three interlinked bangaldar roofs, following the curve of the arch of the three windows underneath, and supporting one to several interlaced lotus domes. This combination of several bangaldar roofs and domes can first be traced, in a still tentative stage, in the mausoleum of Muhammad Quli at Bhangarh, Alwar (AD 1706) and in the buildings of Sawai Jai Singh II at Jaipur. In the Qudsia Bagh towers we find already its classic form which was next taken over in the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur, and then was to dominate the whole architecture of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is worth mentioning that here, too, the new development is inspired by Hindu concepts, for it is a mere repetition, in the Mughal typology, of chapel niches and miniature shikharas piled one on top of the other, replaced by windows and bangaldar roofs, and the spires by the lotus domes. And thus it is not surprising that this late Mughal system was again to impose itself on the garbagriha of the Hindu temples of the last Rajput and Maratha period.
The Qudsia Bagh, thus, forms a turning point in the history of the late Mughal architecture. It is the consummation of the Baroque trend of classic Mughal architecture of Shahjahan. Aurangzeb and Muhammad Shah, of the shift of accent from static balance to dynamic tension. Simultaneously, however, it represents the transformation of the majestic Baroque into the gay and frivolous Rococo. So far it follows the same route as the architecture of the early Nawabs of Oudh. But there the road bifurcates. The Qudsia Bagh represents also the decisive step towards the Hinduisation of Mughal art. This process had already set in under Aurangzeb, unconsciously of course, for nobody would have condemned such a trend more than the orthodox Muslim emperor. But since Ibrahim Adilshah Il Deccani art had been strongly Hinduised, and with the annexation of the Deccan sultanates this Deccani style had more and more infiltrated into the Mughal art. Now, however, this trend became more conscious. However pious a Muslim Qudsia Begum might have been she had been a dancing girl of dark-skinned Hindu origin [21]. The art of the dancing girls had always preserved much of the Hindu spirit. Thus with the ‘Hindu' dancing girl dictating the fashion, Hindu sentiment had to pervade the art patronised by her. The Mughal art typology was consciously conserved and respected. Subconsciously it was reinterpreted. The Muslim constructive spirit at last gave way to a Hindu sculptural approach, the Persian clarity to the Hindu joy of irregular growth and involution, the light flowers of Persia and Kashmir to the succulent turgidity of the lotus. It means all the difference of life experience between the Central Asian desert to northwest Indian steppe, and tropical plains. Thus the Qudsia Bagh became the starting point for another Hindu art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, amongst the Rajputs, Sikhs and Marathas.
Notes and References:
1. H. Hlin, Principles of Art History (New York, 1923). W Weisbach, Vom Geschmack und seinen Wandlungen (Basel, 1947). M Dvorak, Kunstgeschichte als Geislesgeschichte (Munich. 1924); H Tietze. Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte Ein Versuch (Leipzig, 1913) O. Benesch, The Art of Renaissance in Northern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1947). W Weisbuch. Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation (Berlin, 1921).
2. H. Goetz, The Crisis of Indian Civilization in the 18th and early 19th Centuries (Calcutta, 1938).
3. H. Goetz, 'Late Indian Architecture'. Acta Orientalia, vol. 18, 1940, pp. 81ff
4. M. Zafar Hasan, Last of Muhammedan and Hindu Monuments Delhi Province (Calcutta 1915 22), vol. II, p. 295ff. there is also a bibliography
5. Robert Bowyer. Oriental Scenery (London May 1795), vol. 1, plate 8, see also Sayyid Ahmad, Athar-al-Sanadid, vol III, p. 92.
6. List of Muhammedan and Hindu Monuments, vol. II, no 411
7. C.J. French, Journal of a Tour in Upper India with the Camp of the Earl of Auckland. (Simla, 1872), p. 16; Stephen Carr, The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi (Calcutta, 1876), p. 271.
8. H.C. Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present (London, 1902), p. 54, 88; G.R. Hearn, The Seven Cities of Delhi, (London, 1906), p. 25 (new edn 1928).
9. List of Muhammedan and Hindu Monuments, vol. I, no. 33: Sonehri Masjid; H.G. Keene, Fall of the Mughal Empire (London, 1887), p. 28; Sir H.M. Elliot and John Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians (Calcutta, 1877), vol. VIII, pp. 113, 133, 140f., 143, 323; J. Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire (Calcutta, 1932), vol. 1, pp. 334ff.
10. G. Sanderson, A Guide to the Buildings and Gardens of Delhi Fort (Delhi, 1937).
11. List of Muhammedan and Hindu Monuments, vol. 1, no. 33.
12. For this motif cf. J. Rosinthal, L'Origine des Stalactites de l'Architecture Orientale (Paris, 1938).
13. Thus also in the Burhanpur palace of Asaf Jah.
14. This lotus flower is a reinterpretation either of a stalactite system, the first example of which we have at the Qutb Minar, or of closely-set balcony brackets.
15. E.G. Bhagmati's Mosque, Golkonda; Gateway of the Gol Gumbaz. Bijapur, etc.
16. This form has later been imitated in the Sikandar Bagh, Lucknow; still later, in the semi-European transition style of the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, it became quite common.
17. These lotus buds go back, on the one side to the vertical bosses between the horizontal brackets of the corbelled arch, on the other to the S-shaped ends of the makara arch in mediaeval Hindu architecture.
18. The latter evolved from the bases of the Mughal pillars of the seventeenth-century type.
19. Actually these 'lotus' ceilings have a much older history; Aurangzeb's architects took them over from the Deccan where, again, they had been a heritage of mediaeval Hindu Art.
20. An adaptation of the Hindu kalasa.
21. Though no portrait of hers is known, her son Ahmad Shah was the only Mughal emperor of pronounced Hindu, dark-brown racial type.
First published in Islamic Culture, vol. 26, no. 1. 1952. pp. 132-44