rious tastes in the lavish use of the most costly building materials, especially white marble with precious inlay. The commanding influence which women now assumed at the Mogul court—the imperious Nūr Jahān, Jahāngir's empress, and of her niece, Shah Jahān's beloved Mumtāz Mahall—is shown in the feminine elegance, contrasting strongly with the manly vigour of Akbar's buildings, which characterises the Itmād-ud-daulah's tomb, the Moti Masjid and the Tāj Mahall at Agra, and the Dīwān-i-Khās at Delhi. But all these buildings, as well as the later additions to Akbar's palace at Agra, are natural developments of the Indian craft tradition of pre-Muhammadan times, influenced by the idiosyncrasies of the ruling monarch, and adapted by Indian court craftsmen to the ideas and social conditions of Muhammadan India. It is quite futile to seek for the creative impulse behind them in Samarkand, Timur's capital, or any other of the cities where the Moguls' Turkish ancestors ruled, for every phase of Mogul architecture is essentially Indian.
The Indian type of bulbous or lotus dome which characterises Mogul buildings after Akbar's time most probably was brought to Delhi from Bijāpūr, but it originated in Buddhist India—together with the "horse-shoe" or lotus-leaf arch from which its constructive principle is derived—from a dome of light construction built in an elastic framework, like the thatched roofs of Bengal, tied together internally by the mahā-padma, or great lotus—i.e., eight or more radiating bambu or wooden ties which suggested to the builder the mystic lotus. He therefore emphasised the symbolism externally by a band of lotus petals[1] round the neck of the dome, and repeated
- ↑ The petals are clearly shown in the sculptured relief from Ajantā, Pl. XLII, a.
