The Holbrook news., 1911-07-28


 turns in through the dark red
 A gateway a mile outside of the
 modern city of Agra, and at last catches sight of the famous Tai. By common consent the tomb of Shah Jehan's loved wife Is the goal and center of Indian travelling.
 Nor is this to be wondered at; for after the last word of praise and ap- preciation of the Tai as building has been said, there is Something more, something greater about 1t still That which weighs heaviest in our estima- ton and lives longest in our memories is that side of it which photographs cannot give. Surely the dullest of vls- itors must be impressed by the mere fact that the Tai stands, as nothing else in the world stands, for the great and lasting devotion of a man for woman. Remember that 1t was erect ed in eternal honor of a woman at time when women were regarded as little but the playthings of their own CTS, and by the disciple of a faith which to this day denies to woman the possession of a soul. The story OI lQ6 1ONG O1 OudA oCA4oA- AOA i-Mahal is one of the great romances of the worlds history.
 Muntaz-i-Mahal was the daughter of Asaf Kahn and was married to Shah Jehan in 1915, 12 years before the sue cession of her husband to the throne. Indeed she knew little of the splendors of Shah Jehan's court, for in 1929 she died at Burhanpore, the capital of the Deccan Province, and with her the light went out of the life of the most splendid of all emperors. Crushed with grief, Shah Jehan determined that his lost love should have such a memorial as neither woman nor man had ever had in the history of the world before. So he called to him one Ustad-Isa, a cunning archi- tect, and bade him prepare as noble a design as his imagination could fur nish. We do not know very much about the actual building of the Tai The minarets, which are perhaps the most criticized details in the struc- ture, were moved away from the cen tral building, and stand, instead, at the four corners of the marble plateau, or plinth, on which the Tai is built.
 We know from Tavernier that the cost of the scaffolding was as great as that of the tomb itself, because there were at that time no trees near by from which timber could be obtained for this purpose. We are told that Austin de Bordeaux, an absconding French jeweler, was called in to orna- ment its white marble walls with the famous "pietra dura" work. Tradi- tion also has it that Verroneo, an Italian, had a hand in the decoration of the tomb. But of the part that Shah Jehan himself played in this colossal enterprise we know nothing. The emperor stated that, apart from the materials, to which half of Asia contributed her marbles, the masons alone were paid the sum of $3,000,000. Seventeen years were occupied in the building. The body of Muntaz-i-Mahal was then placed under the dome in the place of honor.
 Years afterward, when Shah Jehan himself, a broken, disappointed and dethroned man, came to die as his own sons prisoner in the fort he had himself built at Agra, they laid his body beside that of his loved mistress. Not even then did they dare break the great tradition of love that the Tai was built to immortalize. Shah Jehan's tomb, though larger-as beflts an emperor-is placed on one side of Muntaz-i-MahaIs central resting place. These tombs, in accordance with east ern customs, are not the actual rest ing places of the bodies. MuntazI- Mahal and Shah Jehan lie in the crypt underneath, where the relative positions, as already noted, are faith fully maintained.
 Inside, beneath the marble dome, there is, around the tombs of the two lovers, an exquisitely beautiful pierced marble trellis heavily inlaid with pre- cious stones. The light is admitted only through double screens of white marble trellis-work of the most beau