The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-02-26
THE VACCINATIONS OF DELHI MAKE
A STRANGE SPECTACLE.
Magnificent Monuments of Past Dy-
nasties Contrast with the squaior
of India as 1t Now Is.
G. W. Stevens. in London Mail.

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that time Delhi's master called himself en-
peror of the world, and emperors, at least
of India, have ruled there almost ever since.
Mohammed, an Afghan of Ghor, took it in
1893; Tamerlane, the Mogul, sacked it two
hundred years later; Nadir Shah, the Per-
sian, in 1893. Ahmed Shah Durani in 1856;
the Marathas took it three years later. Half
a century on, in 1903, General Lake took the
capital Of India for Britain. And British it
has been ever ~since-except for those few
months in 1857 when the mutiny brought the
ghost of the Mogul empire into the sem
blance of life again, till Nicholson stormed
the breach in the Kashmir bastion and
dyed Delhi British forever with his blood.
Look from the ridge, whence the columns
marched out to that last capture; the bat
tered trophy of so many conquerers re-
mains wonderfully fresh and fair. 1t
seems more like a wood than a city. The
rolls of green are only s~pangled with white,
as if it were villas standing in orchards.
Only the snowy domes and tall minarets,
the cupolas and gilded pinnacles betray the
still great and populous city that nestles be-
low you and takes breath after her thou
sand troubles.
Yet Delhi is still scanned with the scars of
her spoilers and still jeweled with rem
nants Of the gens they fought for. If you
a them in order you will go first, not into
the city, but eleven miles south to the tower
of Kutb Minar. Through the dust of the
road, rising out OF the springing wheat,
among the m-ud-and-mat huts before which
squat the brown-limbed peasants, you see
the country a litter of broken walls, tumb-
ling towers, rent domes. There are frag-
ments of seven cities built by seven kings
before tho nrpcppt naIbf uyoc EIovov, v,floc,
of them bring you to the tower and mosque
of Kuth.
Kutb-ed-Din was a slave, who raised him
self to viceroy of Delhi when the Mussul-
mans took it. then to Emperor of Hindustan
and founder of a dynasty. Whether he or
his son or the last of the Hindu kings built
the tower antiquarians are undecided and
others care little. 1t is enough that here is
one andmark in Delhis history, one spen-
did monument reared for a symbol of tri-
umph by a victor whom now nobody can
certainly identify. 1t is a colossal hve-sto-
ried tower, $40 feet high, or nearly fifty feet
diameter at the base and tapering to nine
feet at the top. Tiny balconies with bal
lustrades mark the functions of the stories;
the three lower are red stone, the two up
per, dwarfed just under the sky, faced with
white marble. All the red part is huted
into alternate semicircles and right angles,
44NbltO al ON0i Will lldC6Iy, anu DGIlEQ WIFI
inscriptions under the balconies. But the
details strike you little; the vertical lines of
the nuting only give the impression that this
is one huge pillar with a red shaft and a
white capital-a pillar that might form part
of the most tremendous temple in the world,
yet stands quite seemly alone by reason of
it's surprising bigness.
A FAMOUS TOWER.
Pant to the top. 1t will do you good,
though the view is nothing. The country
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of young corn, and fallow, dead fiat on every
side, ugly with the complaoent plainness of
all very rich country. Beyond the sheeny
ribbon of the Jumna, north, south, east,
west, into the blurred horizon, you can see
only land and land and land-a million acres,
with nothing on them to see, except the
wealth Of India and the secret Of the great
ness of Delhi
Then look down past your feet and you
viii see the evidence of some of Delhi's falls.
From the ground you will have noticed ruins
about you, but there the Kutb NIinar dwarfs
everything. Now you see that you stand
above a field of broken arches, solitary pill
lars, stumps Of towers, and in the middle
of what must once have been a town Of
mosques and tombs. Before it was that, it
was a town of Hindu temples and palaces.
In the court of the ruined mosque stands
a solid wrought-iron pillar-little enough to
look at, but curious because it is at least
100 years old, and there is nothing else
AnANO INK ~ II NAC wei II OCd4S a 0dIlShilN
inscription to the effect that this is 1.-THE
Arm of Fame of Raja Dhava. who con-
quered his %neighbors and won the undivided
sovereignty Of the EARTH"
Poor Raja Dhava! The temples of gener-
atoms that had already forgotten him are
swept utterly away; the mosque of their
ConquerorS stands now only as a few shat
tered red arches and pillars with defaced
flowers willing on them. Beyond that is the
base Of what was once to be a tower more
than twice as high as the Kutb Minar; that
was never even finished. The very tower
you stand on has been buffeted by earth
quakes, and a great part of it is mere res
t~oration. And Delhi, which in the year one
stood here, has drifted way almost out of
sight from the summit and left these for
lorn fragments to decay without even the
consolation of neishbOrhOOd.
Poets and preachers have already pointed
the necessary moral, let us go back to the
city. Here at least is the Jumna Musjid, the
great mosque, saved complete out of the
storms-a baby of little more than two hun
dred years, to be sure, but still something,
1t is said to be the largest mosque in the
world-a vast stretch Of red sandstone and
white marble and gold outstanding from a
platform reached on three sides by Nights OF
steps so tall, so maJestlcally VIDE that they
are like a stone mountain tanned into order
and proportion at an emporer's Will. Above
the brass-mounted doors rise red portals SO
huge that they almost dwarf the whole, red
galleries above them, White marble domeS
above them, white marble minarets rising
higher yet, with pillars and cupolas ana gid
ed pinnacles above all. The walls OF the
quadrangle, beside the gateWays, seem 10
creep along the ground; then, at the corners,
rise towers with more open hambers more
cupolas and gilded pinnacles. Within, above
the clustered quadrangle, bulge three pure
white domes-not hemispheres, like western
domes, but complete globes only sliced away
at the base and tapering to, a spike at the
top-and a slender minaret TANKS each side.
A STRANGE BUILDING.
The whole to Western eyes has a strange
effect. Our own buildings are tighter to-
gether, gripped and focused more in one
glance; over the Jumna Musjid your eye
must wander, and then the mind must con-
meet the views of the different parts. If
you look at It near YOU cannot see it all;
if far, it is low and seems to struggle. The
West could hardly call it beautiful; it has
proportion, but no compass. Therefore II
does not abuse you, as some great buildings
do; somehow you have a feeling of patron
age toward it. Yet il is most light and
graceful with all its bulk. 1t seems to suit
India, thus spread out to get It's fill of the
warm sun. 1t looks rich and lavish, as If
space were OF no account TO II.
Between this mosque and the Jumna river
stands the fort, the ancient stronghold and
palace of the mogul emperors. A towering
wall incloSes it, Titanic slabs, always of
the same red sandstone, mOaIed ana battle
mented. You go in unQer the great Lahore
gate-its massiveness is lightened by more
domes and arches, more gilt and marble on
barracks and married quarters and COM
missariat stores. You look for ~turquoised
hubble-bubbles and you ind the clay Of
Private Atkins. 1t is disillusion, and yet IL
Is very Delhi. The remains OF Aurungzeb'S
palaces are lost among the imperial plant of
s-LA~f4A--