Nūr Jahān, wielded unbounded influence over the Emperor, he had renewed the destruction of Hindu temples which had ceased entirely during the reigns of father and grandfather. He had broken down the steeple of the Christian church at Agra, and would hardly have outraged Muhammadan orthodoxy and the memory of his beloved wife by employing a Christian as the chief designer of a tomb which was to be peerless in the world of Islam. There is not the least evidence that Veroneo's position at the court was that of a builder or architect. Nearly all Europeans in the Mogul imperial service were artillerists, and it was probably in that capacity that he enjoyed Shah Jahān's favour. Father Manrique's story is not corroborated by any other contemporary writer. Tavernier and Bernier both allude to the building of the Tāj, and they would certainly have given a European the credit due to him if they had heard and believed the tale.
Moreover, the idea that Indian builders of the seventeenth century worked, in the modern European fashion, after measured drawings prepared beforehand by the chief architect, and that the faultless curves of the central dome betray the mind and hand of a foreigner, is altogether wide of the mark. They worked then, as they do now, after a general idea, based upon traditional practice. When the general idea had been settled by Shah Jahān, the execution of it would have been left in the hands of his expert advisers, and the dome built by the dome-builder would be the latter's own creation, not a precise copy of a paper pattern or model set before him. So if Veroneo was so deeply versed in Indian craft tradition that he could design a lotus dome after the rules laid down in the Silpa-Sāstrās, the dome
