1900.] on Ancient Monnments in hidia. 63 



purpose to which it had been converted by Rangit Singh, viz., as a 

 Government Treasury. The arches were built up with brick-work, and 

 below the marble floor had been excavated as a cellar for the reception 

 of iron-bound chests of rupees. I pleaded for the restoration to its 

 original state of this beautiful little building, which I suppose not one 

 visitor in a hundred to Lahore has ever seen, fianjit Singh cared 

 nothing for the taste or the trophies of his Mahomedan predecessors, 

 and half a century of British military occupation, with its universal 

 paintpot, and the exigencies of the Public Works Engineer, hns assisted 

 tlie melancholy decline. Fortunately in recent years something lias 

 been done to rescue the main buildings of the Moghul Palace from 

 these two insatiable enemies. At Ahmedabad I found the mosque of Sidi 

 Sayid, the pierced stone lattice- work of whose demi-lune windows is one 

 of the gloricii] of India, used as a tehsildar's kutcherry, and disfigured 

 with plaster partitions, and the omnivorous whitewash. I hope to efl^ect 

 the reconversion of tliis building. After the conquest of Upper Burma 

 in 1885, the Palace of the Kings at Mandalay which, although built for 

 the most part of wood, is yet a noble specimen of Burmese art, was 

 converted by our conquering battalions into a Club House, a Government 

 Office, and a Church. By degrees I am engaged in removing these 

 superfluous denizens, with the idea of preserving the building as the 

 monument, not of a dynasty that has vanished never to return, but of 

 an art that, subject to the vicissitudes of fire, earthquake, and decay, is 

 capable of being a joy for ever. There are other sites and fabrics in 

 India upon which I also have my eye, which I shall visit, if possible, 

 during my time, and which I shall hope to rescue from a kindred or a 

 worse fate. 



These are the gloomy or regrettable features of the picture. On the 

 other hand, there has been, during the last 40 years, some sort of 

 sustained effort on the part of Government to recognize its responsibilities 

 and to purge itself of a well-merited reproach. This attempt has been 

 accompanied, and sometimes delayed, by disputes as to the rival 

 claims of research and of conservation, and by discussion over 

 the legitimate spheres of action of the Central and the Local Govern- 

 ments. There have been periods of supineness as well as of activity. 

 There have been moments when it has been argued that the State had 

 exhausted its duty or that it possessed no duty at all. There have be 

 persons who thought that when all the chief monuments were indexed 

 and classified, we might sit down with folded hands and allow them 

 slowly and gracefully to crumble into ruin. There have been others who 

 argued that railways and irrigation did not leave even a modest half a 

 lakh of rupees per annum for the requisite establisliment to supervise 



