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More Delhi
Nov. 13th, 2005 09:20 pmThe local building material is a hard red sandstone; there's also a splendid alabaster-type marble in some mountains sufficiently close-by that a maharajah can order its transport by bullock-cart.
So the Red Fort in Delhi is, at least in colouration, roughly what it says on the packet. I always have trouble comparing the scale of these things; I think the Red Fort is a lot larger than any British castle, though it's some hundreds of years newer. Inside any Moghul fort-palace are pillared audience halls, and throne-rooms in marble richly inlaid with cornelian, malachite, lapis lazuli and opal, and dry pools whence once played fountains of rose-water for the amusement of the harem and the monarch.
The Red Fort contains also a mosque in alabaster made by Aurungazeb, the Nero [but puritanically Muslim rather than given to the delights of the flesh] of the Moghul dynastic story. He overthrew his father Shahjahan -- reading between the lines, because Shahjahan had just spent twenty years of the kingdom's revenues building the Taj Mahal as his wife's tomb and was planning to spend twenty more building its exact replica in black as his own -- and, fearful of overthrow, didn't train his sons in the art of kingship; accordingly, at his death, the Persians invaded.
Other sites were rather more interesting. There are two million Baha'i in India; there is a temple in southern Delhi, in the form from the outside of a very large 27-petalled lotus-flower and rather reminiscent of the roof of New Hall in Cambridge, into which pours a constant stream of visitors. They can't all be Baha'i, unless the average Baha'i visits the temple every six months. Inside is an amazingly cool, lofty, naturally-lit and tranquil space where visitors sit and meditate.
There are six other temples; Sydney, Western Samoa, Panama City, Kampala, Frankfurt and Illinois. From the pictures in the visitor's centre, I think I've started at the best one.
The last ancient site I visited pre-dated the Moghuls by some hundreds of years. It's a huge complex of red sandstone mosques, with wonderfully intricate carving on every interior surface and many exterior surfaces, and includes the World's Most Excessive Minaret (red sandstone, roughly conical, 78m tall, 15m diameter at the bottom and 2.5m at the top) and the foundations and first story for the double-in-each-dimension minaret which would, had its builder not either run out of money or been defeated by the Persians, either be the model symbol of India or be an exercise in the limits of material strength known to every engineering undergraduate.
Why the long post? It's 2133, I've passed through customs and the plane to Bangkok leaves at 0005. I have two books, but one's Brick Lane by Monica Ali and reading it makes me feel gloomy, and the other is A Suitable Boy of 1700 small-print pages, rather much to start at this time of night.
The mood is the Useful Word I learnt at the National Museum. It means 'frightened-by-a-snake pose', and the Buddha must be depicted in this pose when illustrating one particular episode of his life, presumably one involving nagas.
So the Red Fort in Delhi is, at least in colouration, roughly what it says on the packet. I always have trouble comparing the scale of these things; I think the Red Fort is a lot larger than any British castle, though it's some hundreds of years newer. Inside any Moghul fort-palace are pillared audience halls, and throne-rooms in marble richly inlaid with cornelian, malachite, lapis lazuli and opal, and dry pools whence once played fountains of rose-water for the amusement of the harem and the monarch.
The Red Fort contains also a mosque in alabaster made by Aurungazeb, the Nero [but puritanically Muslim rather than given to the delights of the flesh] of the Moghul dynastic story. He overthrew his father Shahjahan -- reading between the lines, because Shahjahan had just spent twenty years of the kingdom's revenues building the Taj Mahal as his wife's tomb and was planning to spend twenty more building its exact replica in black as his own -- and, fearful of overthrow, didn't train his sons in the art of kingship; accordingly, at his death, the Persians invaded.
Other sites were rather more interesting. There are two million Baha'i in India; there is a temple in southern Delhi, in the form from the outside of a very large 27-petalled lotus-flower and rather reminiscent of the roof of New Hall in Cambridge, into which pours a constant stream of visitors. They can't all be Baha'i, unless the average Baha'i visits the temple every six months. Inside is an amazingly cool, lofty, naturally-lit and tranquil space where visitors sit and meditate.
There are six other temples; Sydney, Western Samoa, Panama City, Kampala, Frankfurt and Illinois. From the pictures in the visitor's centre, I think I've started at the best one.
The last ancient site I visited pre-dated the Moghuls by some hundreds of years. It's a huge complex of red sandstone mosques, with wonderfully intricate carving on every interior surface and many exterior surfaces, and includes the World's Most Excessive Minaret (red sandstone, roughly conical, 78m tall, 15m diameter at the bottom and 2.5m at the top) and the foundations and first story for the double-in-each-dimension minaret which would, had its builder not either run out of money or been defeated by the Persians, either be the model symbol of India or be an exercise in the limits of material strength known to every engineering undergraduate.
Why the long post? It's 2133, I've passed through customs and the plane to Bangkok leaves at 0005. I have two books, but one's Brick Lane by Monica Ali and reading it makes me feel gloomy, and the other is A Suitable Boy of 1700 small-print pages, rather much to start at this time of night.
The mood is the Useful Word I learnt at the National Museum. It means 'frightened-by-a-snake pose', and the Buddha must be depicted in this pose when illustrating one particular episode of his life, presumably one involving nagas.
