Indian Antiquary Vol 07

SR No.: 032499
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 386
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1878.
ing still visible to any worshipper who might It did not, however, die without to some exhappen to look upwards from within.
tent influencing what we now know as the BiOne may, I think, recognize in these two japur style of architecture. In the windows buildings the work of different, though contem- of many Adil Shahi buildings the simple forms porary, influences and architects. It is pro- of Chalukya tracery are reproduced with good bable that while Revaya the mistri was doing effect; and the beautiful Ibrahim Rozah, built his best with Hindu ideas and Hindu materials by a king who did not die till 1636', owes much to build such a mosque as might entitle him to of its charm to the employment of Hindu pilhis fee of "twelve chavars of arable land rent- lars, brackets, and flat ceilings, modified indeed free for ever," and the Sayyid or Maulana of by the use of cement and concrete, both prac. the garrison was overlooking him with antically unknown to the indigenous race of iconoclastic eye, some Persian or Turkish royal architects. The Musulmans of Bijapur, moreengineer was at work on the fortifications close
over, used one architectural device which was by, utilizing what materials he could, with as due to the influence of their predecessors, and great a contempt for everything but economy deserves a very distinct description. They and defence as could be produced in the 19th found, as everywhere in India, the horizontal or century by the training of Woolwich and Chat
bracketed arch. They brought with them, as ham. Our hypothetical Persian was familiar with everywhere else in India, the radiated or true the arch; he had very likely seen old Roman arch, so well known to the Western world, and buildings in which arches were, or seemed to be, they used the former occasionally, the latter supported on pillars; so, when he ran short of in a style which has seldom, if ever, been surstolen goods,-to wit, great slabs and complete passed. But they alone, I think, ever combined pillars suitable to the trabeate style of his these two forms of construction-not only in a Hindu masons,-he utilized the smaller stones single arch, but in a single stone. This was at hand, in accordance with the lessons of his effected by using in their abutments, above youth, but, to the last, economized labour by the spring of the arch, long stones, with short supporting his arches on the stumps of Hindu elbows turned downward in the form and columns, in some cases turning them upside angle necessary for voussoirs (as shown in the down rather than go to the trouble of cutting a diagram Fig. 2). It is obvious that an arch new capital.
built in this manner contains the elements and We have here the incunabula of a distinct merits of both systems, and avails itself of every style of civil and ecclesiastical architecture, element of stability which can be found in cut which would, if left to itself, have grown up stone. It could not, of course, be practically much as that of Ahmadabad did, from a similar applied throughout such an arch as that of the origin. This, however, was put a stop to by the Gaggan Mahal, 83 feet in span, but in the flood of foreign influence which accompanied lower part of even such arches, and throughout the Adil Shahi dynasty which succeeded Karim- those of less dimensions, it is as ingenious and u'd-din and his like as provincial governors, and efficient a structural device as can well be coneventually made of Bijapur the metropolis of ceived, and has probably much to say to the a great kingdom, and the centre of a great wonderful vitality of the monuments of Bijaarchitectural school, essentially Western in its pur,-for hardly any other word is applicable love for the dome and pointed arch. Consider to the way in which these have survived every ing how far they excelled all the rest of the form of ill usage, from Moghul bombardment to world in their chosen style, and the distinct Marathả pillage, which, with a thoroughness inferiority of the local architecture to that of characteristic of that predatory race, extended Gujarat for the purpose of great buildings, we here even to building materials. need not spend more than a passing regret I have already said that the immediate neighupon the death in its cradle of the nascent Cha- bourhood of the city of Bijapur is barren of lakya-Saracenic style.
Hindu and Jaina remains—for the reason, proIbrahim Adil Shah II., said to have been nicknamed when supposed by his followers (during the first siege of by his Musulman subjects Jagad Gura, in derision of his Multán) to favour the English and Pathan interest, was toleration for the Hindus. A converse modern case is that contemptuously styled "Raja Sheikh Singh." of the famous Sikh Raj& Sher Singh Atariwala, who