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When at last we reached the Taj itself. Virginia and I saw that we had not been misled. Its beauty could hardly be overstated. The view of the whole building, above the long reflecting-pool that leads up to it from the gateway, is familiar to everybody from picture-books and travelogues. But what you don’t expect unless you have studied Mogul art is the wealth of carving and inlay that seems to cover much of the building. Both inside and out. the creamy marble is inlaid with symetrical but infinitely varied flower patterns in multicolored stone. Mote remarkable still, some of the wall panels have been cut back to a depth of perhaps an inch to leave intricate flower patterns standing out in low relief. And the surface of the plain marble surrounding the flowers is as smooth and even as the stone was before it was carved. No wonder the whole thing absorbed the labor of 20.000 men for twenty years.
The building is, of course, a mausoleum built by the seventeenth-century emperor Shah Jehan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Inside, directly under the center of the dome, stands a relatively simple cenotaph, a coffinshaped block of marble. To its left, as seen from the door, and therefore off center, is a similar cenotaph. The visitor is told first that these are not real tombs but only replicas .of. the tombs in , the. crypt' Selow. Then onfc learns that the occupant of the off-center
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