In our country when we think of a monument, it is a granite shaft or a marble block; we place it in a cemetery, and plant vines and trees around it. In commemoration of many great and good men we sometimes build a high monument—like that on Bunker Hill—where we can climb to the top and look over the country, telling each other how grand the nation has become because of the patriots beneath us who gave their lives for our liberty.
But in India, diamonds are dug out of the earth, precious stones filtered from streams, and pearls fished from the seas. Every thought of nature is a jewel, and glitters in the sunshine. The beetles are living gems; the orange lizards that peep from under the stones show neck-laces of brilliants. It is the land of peacocks, whose gorgeous eyes repeat in the sunlight all the wonders under ground. No goldsmith can make such dazzling colors as the butterflies carry through the air. So when the Emperor would build a mausoleum to the Pearl of Women, he adorned it with the most splendid gems that ever shone even in that Land of Jewels.
Shah-Jehan had been collecting precious stones all his life; but though he already had a greater number than any one else in the world, he ransacked all countries for more and finer gems to adorn his work.
He brought the most skillful architects from France and Italy. The chief of them was Austin de Bordeaux, named the Jewel-handed.
Seeds planted in the garden round the edifice grew to be tall trees, and children who had watched the levelling of the great platform became middle-aged men and women before the dome was finished. Twenty thousand workmen went home every night, year after year, always telling their families how particular the Emperor was that every stone should be placed right, till at last they grew grey-headed—for it took twenty-two years of hard work to build the tomb.
I cannot tell you how many millions it cost—there are so many different estimates given—it were as easy to tell the majorities on election night. But all agree that it cost an enormous sum.
Nothing interested Shah-Jehan but this tomb of his beautiful wife. It stood on the river Jumna in a garden two-thirds as large as Boston Common, and was surrounded by a red sand-stone wall high as the roof of most houses. The Emperor used to sit in one of the arcades on the inner side of this wall and watch the progress of the building. Careless of the terraced garden with its paths of variegated marble and its eighty fountains throwing diamonds into the air, regardless of the two mosques where Mussulmen go to pray, his eye was always fastened upon the dazzling structure which rose above all and gleamed like a mountain of snow against the blue sky.
At length the Taje Mahal, the “Crown of Edifices,” was completed. Let us visit it. On the side opposite the river we pass the wall through the grand red gate-way. It seems to be ornamented with garlands, but looking closer you observe that what we mistook for flowers are texts from the Koran, the Bible of the Mahommedans. These texts are inlaid in the stone, arranged in graceful lines, and illuminated with colored marbles.
Passing through the garden, an avenue of Italian cypresses shuts us in like a pall, while a voice from the attendant comes out of the darkness, saying: “Close your eyes for a moment; you will not die, but you shall see Heaven.” Emerging from between the trees, we mount to the platform which is raised eighteen feet above the highest garden terrace, and is a square of over three hundred feet, glittering and polished as ice. At each corner and separate from the main building rises a tall slender minaret, through whose open carving appears the circular stairs leading to the top. In the midst we behold the octagonal mausoleum, surmounted by four small cupolas around the central dome, which towers as high as Bunker Hill monument.
Where we stand above the world, everything beneath our feet and around us is made of white marble. There is no tinge of color on the four minarets, but within them the central pile is covered with delicate traceries that look like flowering vines. They are verses from the Koran; every letter is black marble inlaid in the white, and ornamented with jasper, agate, cornelian and lapis-lazuli. When we are told that the whole sacred book is written in this way upon the Taje Mahal, we understand why the work took twenty years.