the lotus flower on the top of it, where the ends of the ribs were joined to the finial. This lotus symbolism is almost universal in the bulbous domes of India, and marks distinctly their native origin, for it would never have entered into the mind of a foreign Musalman craftsman, except one who inherited the traditions of Buddhist India.
The Empress Nūr Jahān, besides the tomb of her father, the Itmād-ud-daulah at Agra, built Jahāngīr's tomb at Shahdara, near Lahore. Her charming apartments in the Agra Palace, known as the Samman Burj, or Jasmine Tower (Pl. XLVII, b), were also probably built after her directions. Mumtāz Mahall afterwards lived in them, and Shah Jahān, imprisoned in his own palace by his son, Aurangzīb, passed his last hours there gazing at the peerless monument he had raised to her memory.
The most famous of Shah Jahān's buildings owe much of their beauty to their faultless contours, the white marble with which they are faced lending itself admirably to the efforts of the masons to achieve this purity of line. The reticence in sculptured ornamentation which orthodox Musalman feeling demanded also helped in the same direction, while its jewel-like enrichment adds to the Tāj Mahall a peculiar feminine charm.
Nearly all critics agree in recognising that this monument, built by Shah Jahān for his most beloved wife, Arjumand Bānū Begam—otherwise Mumtāz Mahall, "the Elect of the Palace"—is unique in its evasive loveliness, so difficult to define in architectural terms, but most expressive of the builder's intentions that the fairest and most lovable of Indian women should have a monument as fair and lovely as herself. In this personal note, however, the Tāj Mahall does
