Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/283

CHAP. V. GUJARAT : TOMBS. 239 and when the screens were added to enclose the central square, it was altogether the most successful sepulchral design carried out in the pillared style at Ahmadabad. Towards the end of their career, the architects of Ahmadabad evinced a strong tendency to revert to the arched forms generally used by their brethren in other countries. For Sayyid Mubarak, one of Mahmud Begarah's ministers, a tomb was built in 1484, near Mahmudabad, which is wholly in the arched style, and remains one of the most splendid sepulchres in India. 1 He also erected at Batwa, near Ahmadabad, a tomb over the grave of a saint, which is in every respect in the same style. So little, however, were the builders accustomed to arched forms, that, though the plan is judiciously disposed by placing smaller arches outside the larger, so as to abut them, still all those of the outer range have either fallen down, or, as has been suggested, were never erected, and the whole is very much crippled, while the tomb without arches, that stands within a few yards of it, remains entire. The scale of the two, however (Plan, No. 398), reveals the secret of the preference accorded to the arch as a constructive expedient. The larger piers, the wider spacing, the whole dimensions, were on a grander scale than could be attained with beams only, as the Hindus used them. As the Greeks and Romans employed these features, any dimensions that were feasible with arches could be attained by pillars ; but the Hindus worked to a smaller modulus, and do not seem to have known how to increase it. It must, how- ever, be remarked that they generally used pillars only in courts, where there was nothing to compare them with but the spectator's own height ; and there the forms employed by them were large enough. It was only when the Moslims came to use them externally, and in conjunction with arches and other larger features, that their diminutive scale became apparent. It is perhaps the evidence of a declining age to find size becoming the principal aim. But it is certainly one great and important ingredient in architectural design, and so thought the later architects of Ahmadabad. In their later mosques and buildings they attained greater dimensions, but it was at the expense of all that renders their earlier style so beautiful and so interesting. Besides the buildings of the classes above enumerated, there are several smaller objects of art at Ahmadabad which are of extraordinary beauty. Among these are several baolis, wdvs, or deep wells, with broad flights of steps leading down to them, and ornamented with pillars and galleries to as great an extent Described further on, p. 244, Woodcuts Nos. 400 and 401,