194 SUMMER GARDENS OF KASHMIR 



carving of an older day. One reads therefore, with 

 something more than astonishment, the Report 

 written only five years ago, which, in its archaeo- 

 logical zeal for Mughal work, recommended that 

 the Kashmiri pavilions should be pulled down 

 to the level of the underlying stone, not on 

 account of their ugliness or want of utility, but 

 merely because they were not Mughal ! Surely 

 this is a short-sighted and unhistorical view. 

 The antiquarian spirit in India is a pious one; 

 but without a sense of proportion, a study of 

 the life of the people, and aesthetic enthusiasms, 

 it will have no force or driving power. Mean- 

 while the clever carvers of Srinagar spend their 

 time on hideous, over - elaborated travesties of 

 European furniture, tortured tea-tables, and un- 

 comfortable chairs, not that they have forgotten 

 the larger and bolder work so suited to their 

 style, with its balconies and the flower -beU 

 ends, but for the simple reason that nobody 

 nowadays wants such things. The Delhi Durbar 

 showed what Kashmir workmen well inspired 

 could do. The gateway of their Maharaja's 

 camp was perhaps not very happy — a stone 

 temple design carried out in wood — ^but the high 

 pierced and carved railing on either side of it 



