58 Lord Curzon [Feb. 



early Mahomedan structure in this country, was built within a century 

 of Westminster Hall in London, which we are far from regarding as an 

 ancient moimment. As for the later glories of Arabian nrchitecture 

 at Del 111, at Agra, and at Lahore, tlie Colleges of Oxfoid and Cambridge, 

 which we regard in England as the last pioduct of a dying architectural 

 epoch, were already grey when they sprang, wliite and spotless, from 

 the hands of the masons of Akbar and Shah Jelian; while the Taj 

 Mahal was only one generation older than Wren's Renaissance fabric 

 of modern St. Paul's. 



There is another remarkable feature of the majority of Indian 

 antiquities — of those at any rate that belong to the Mussulman epoch — 

 that they do not represent an indigenous genius or an Indian style. 

 They are exotics, imported into this country in the train of conquerors, 

 who had learnt their architectural lessons in Persia, in Central Asia, in 

 Arabia, in Afghanistan. More than a thousand years earlier a foreign 

 influence had exercised a scarcely less marked, though moi-e transient, 

 influence upon certain forms of Indian ai chitecture. I allude to the 

 Greek types which were derived from the Groeco-Bactrian kingdoms, 

 tliat were founded upon the remains of Alexander's conquests, and 

 which in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era pro- 

 foundly affected the art and sculpture of North-West India, and the 

 Punjab. Indian sculptures or Indian buildings, however, because they 

 reflect a foreign influence, or betray a foreign origin, are not the less, 

 but perhaps the more interesting to ourselves, who were borne to India 

 upon the ciest of a later but similar wave, and who may find in their 

 non-Indian characteristics a reminiscence of forms which we already 

 know in Europe, and of a process of assimilation with which ouv own 

 archaeological history has rendered us familiar. Indeed a race like our 

 own, who are themselves foreigners, are in a sense belter fitted to guard, 

 with a dispassionate and impartial zeal, the relics of different ages, and 

 of sometimes antagonistic beliefs, than nn'ght be the descendants of the 

 warring races or the votaries of the rival creeds. To us the relics of 

 Hindu, and Mahomedan, of Buddhist, Brahmin, and Jain are, fi-om the 

 antiquarian, the historical, and the artistic point of view, equally 

 interesting and equally sacred. One does not excite a more vivid, and 

 the other a weaker emotion. Each represents the gloiies or the faith of 

 a branch of the human family. Each fills a chapter in Indian history. 

 Each is a part of the heritage which Providence has committed to the 

 custody of the ruling power. 



If, however, the majority of the structural monuments of India, the 

 topes, and temples, the palaces, and fortresses, and tombs be of no 

 exceeding antiquity in the chronology of architecture, and even if the 



