Some Books of the Week
AT the present moment, when our Anglo-Indian archi- tecture approaches its testing time in the building of the new Delhi, we are glad to receive a second edition of Mr. Havell's very important book on Indian Architecture (Murray, 42s.), published after a lapse of fourteen years. Time, we trelieVe, has proved the correctness of Mr. nova's thesis that the Indian master-builder (and there are millions of his kind in India) should be encouraged to co-operate with us in the building of Indian public works, and we should remember that the tradition of the great craftsmen of the Taj is still alive. Those of us who love Benares and the crescent sweep of its river sometimes forget that two of the stateliest palaces on the Ganges date only from 1860. " To find ' anything to compare with them in Europe one would have to go back to the early days of the Renaissance," says Mr. Havell, and we agree. We cannot refrain from commenting again on the excellent chapter on the Taj, and we feel that Mr. Havell has proved his contention up to the hilt that it is " a living organic growth, born of the Indian artistic con- sciousness." The wages paid by Shah Johan to his master- builders were huge-0,000 a year to a Kandahari master mason '(in our currency) and to a Persian caligraphist, while the chief inlay worker received about £2,000 a year. We can only account for the report that some of the craftsmen died of starvation by remembering that the overseers of the work probably lined their own pockets to a pretty tune.
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