As
the people approached over the intervening one hundred and twenty
yards between the gateway and the hall of audience they were made to
bow down lower and lower to the figure of the Emperor, as he sat upon
his throne, without deigning to show by any motion of limb or muscle
that he was really made of flesh and blood, and not cut out of the
marble he sat upon.
The marble walls on three sides of this recess are inlaid with
precious stones representing some of the most beautiful birds and
flowers of India, according to the boundaries of the country when
Shah Jahan built this palace, which included Kabul and Kashmir,
afterwards severed from it on the invasion of Nadir Shah.[23]
On the upper part of the back wall is represented, in the same
precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of
Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of
Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the
people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no
doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from
Shiraz, Amanat Khan, who designed all the noble Tughra characters in
which the passages from the Koran are inscribed upon different parts
of the Taj at Agra, was permitted to place his own name in the same
bold characters on the right-hand side as we enter the tomb of the
Emperor and his queen.
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