Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/367

LUC 359 feathering down almost to the ground, lies the graveyard, and there, among many cypresses, are the graves or cenotaphs of some 2,000 English- men and women who perished in the muting and sepoy wars of 1857-1858. Architecture.--Nowhere can we see more markedly the influence of an oriental court and its politics upon social life and art than in Lucknow. During the last half of the eighteenth century the sovereigns of Oudh were the chiefs of a great state, including Rohilkhand, Allahabad, Cawn- pore, and Ghazipur, they had great armies, and though singly they were no match for British forces, their pretensions on this head having been for ever set at rest at Buxar in 1764, their alliance was all important to British arms; they were necessary to each other to stand the rising flood of the Marahtas. The dynasty of Oudh was then also a young one; its founder, Saídat Kban, a Persian merchant from Naishápur, was the greatest warrior of his time except Ahmad Khan, Even in old age the prowess of his arm equalled his military skill; his Hindu foes recorded with awe how he slew in single combat Bhagwant Singh Khíchi, and how his troops when almost beaten rushed again to the combat where the long white beard of the old chief was seen in the thick of the battle. His successor, Safdar- jang, was a great statesman; Shujá-ud-daula, a valiant though rash soldier. Still his people tell with pride how he had almost won Buxar when his treacherous general of artillery loaded with hay cartridges, and the battle was lost, but not the honour of the kingdom. During the reigns of these sovereigns nothing was built except forts and wells. All three themselves. took the field against English, Marahtas, Rohillas, or against the great nobles, whose feudal power bad reduced the central authority to a mere name, With Asif-ud-daula a new political situation was developed; he was the contented nay the servile ally of the British ; they had given him Robil- khand ; they were able to give him Benares, and he wanted them to give him over his own step-mother, the Bahu Begam and her hoards. Still the partially sinister influence of a foreign protectorate was not yet visible to any extent; he did not feel himself altogether independent. of his people. His prodigality was not exercised upon personal objects; he built bridges and mosques and the imámbára, the architectural glory of Oudh. It can- not, it is true, compare with the pure examples of Mughal architecture which adorn Delhi and Agra; but taken along with the adjoining mosque, the Husenabad Imámbára, and the Rúmi Darwaza, it forms a group of build- ings whose dimensions and picturesque splendour render it one of the most imposing in the world. Nor was there any admixture of European systems, tawdry in style and bald in design as the details occasionally are, they are never during this period bastard. There are no Corinthian pilasters beneath Moslem domes, no false venetian blinds, no imitation marbles, no pea-green mermaids sprawling over a blue sky above a yellow entabla- ture, none of the mongrel vulgarities which were applied in Vauxhall, Rosherville, and the Surrey gardens, and when expelled from thence took refuge in the Qaisar Bágh and Chhatar Manzil. The plans of Asif-ud- daula's bridge, fort, mosques, and towers arc simple and grand. The