Riaz Ahmad followed strictly the ideas of his forbears, and would not hear of any relaxation of the seclusion of women. In this he was very different from a younger co-religionist whom I had met at Agra at the Moharam Festival, and who was very anxious to talk to the English stranger about what he considered the unfairness of Government regulations. He belonged to what he called the reformed Mohammedans, and said that his sisters were quite free to go about unveiled where they would. He complained of the lack of freedom of the press in India, claiming that it should be just as free as it was in England, and was much surprised when I told him that in England we should not permit any newspaper to publish direct appeals to assassinate the sovereign. He was quite a young fellow, two-and-twenty, and just out of college, hoping to get a billet in the post-office—although he declared that the English clerks are paid higher salaries than natives for the same work.
I think it would be an excellent thing if some good English publisher made it his business to arrange for the translation into Urdu of some of the best English fiction. This young man, for instance, said he had read all he could get and informed me that "Reynolds" was our greatest novelist and that a large number of his books were published in Urdu. I asked him the names of some of the chief ones and he mentioned Mary Price, The Star of Mongolia and The Mysteries of the Court of London. He added that the last-named had been prohibited by Government, but that of course such copies as had already been issued had naturally been treasured by their possessors. He urged the desire of himself and his friends to read the books that are read by well-educated people in England, and I think the range of books available is very restricted. He talked to me about Indian poets, and said that the best modern ones were Dagh of Delhi (poet to the Nizam of Hyderabad, Deccan) and Amir of Lucknow, both of whom died a few years ago, and I hoped the standing of their works was higher than that of Mary Price and The Mysteries of the Court of London. He told me of the writers of Marsias also—Amias and Dabir of Lucknow and added, "I cannot myself write good Marsias, so what is the use of writing at all? But I do write Gazal, which have two lines, and Rubaiyat, which have four lines, and also Kasida, in praise of any famous men."
He certainly had some imagination, for he went on to inform me, laughing, that His Highness the Nizam prided himself upon the swiftness of his carriage-horses which went so quickly that only his moustache could be seen; and after he had passed, no one was able to say what clothes he had had on because of the fleetness of those horses.
We went together to the great mausoleum Nour Jehan built for her parents in the days of her power, and he also accompanied me to Sikandra, the tomb of Akhbar. We drove thither from Agra one hot day, till tall white minarets appeared on the right of the road some miles away across golden fields of mustard, and we soon found ourselves in front of the outer gateway.
Filling a wide band round and over the arch and making very handsome and indeed perfect decoration, are some quotations from the Koran, and added at the base of the left side are the name and date of the carver—"Kutba Abdul Hal Shirazi, year 1022, Hijra."
The whole interior of the great building of Akhbar's tomb is one dark vault 74 feet high. Ending just above the marble of the grave itself there comes down from the darkness the thin chain of a lamp, which is lighted only at the annual festival of Akhbar's death, called in Persian, "Barsi." While two Khadims (servants of the mausoleum) in white turbans and white dhotis held hurricane lanterns for me and the young Mohammedan, a little daylight filtered through the long stone entrance passage, and above, from one of four openings in the wall, a clearer shaft crossed the great void, illuminating part of the chain and falling upon the opposite wall in a pale shade of blue. There is no decoration in this vault—only the plinth of the tomb has one chiselled pattern along its edge. The body—Akhbar's body—wrapped in a white cloth, on which lavender, camphor and other scents had been scattered before it left the palace, was laid upon stones some three or four yards below the floor level and then, after other stones had been placed at the sides, one long slab was laid across the top and earth put over it. The older of the two Khadims said that the rings would have been taken off the king's fingers. He had been thirty-eight years at Sikandra but remembered no strange thing ever happening in the mausoleum. There he has held the lantern for people of all degrees and many countries—people of the West as well as of the East; Edward the Seventh (when Prince of Wales), the Tsar of Russia (when Tsarevitch), the Amir of Afghanistan, as well as our present king.
As I walked slowly round and was looking at the chain—part of which now told as a sharp black silhouette against the light patch of wall beyond—and the broken end hanging to its ring, the young Mohammedan chanted for me some passages from the Koran, his musical voice echoing sweetly in the great dome.
Facing the main gateway to right and left of the central vault are the tombs of Arambano, a daughter of Akhbar, and of Mehrin Nisa, the learned daughter of his great grandson Aurangzebe, who used to write Persian poems. Above the domed central vault with its prisoned air and darkness, reached by a long stairway, is a square court open to the sun and surrounded by cloisters of which the outer walls are marble screens carved in intricate geometric patterns, through which the light comes softly.
Along these cloisters, on the side facing the centre of the court (where a block of white marble bears the ninety-nine names of God), each spandril has a Persian verse above it, and contains a rosette in which is cut part of a poem. These are so interesting that in all twenty-five people, lost in the pleasure of reading from one spandrel to another, as they moved round, have fallen into one of the unprotected wells of the stairways and been killed!
I walked round with the young Mohammedan—keeping one eye open for the stair-wells—while he read me the verses, of which here are several:—