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» Nuz - Who Really Built the Taj Mahal by Maria Christensen

I was rather disappointed to read this rather lopsided article. The imbalance in the article appears to be related to a lack of author's efforts to go through the scholarly literature available on the subject. Had Ms. Christensen done this, she would have abstained from:

* stating that Shah Jahan "felt it to be his duty to promote Islam and persecute Hindus" and "many Hindu temples were destroyed during his reign". [Please note that these allegations are totally unfounded and the literature does not support this].

I very humbly suggest that Ms. Christensen refer to at least the following literature in respect of the above statements quoted from her article:

- GASCOIGNE, B. 1971. The great Moghuls. New Delhi. - NATH, R. 1976. History of Decorative art in Mughal architecture. Delhi. - PANDE, B.N. 1985. Islamic Culture. Orissa Government Press. - LANE-POOLE, S. 1979. Medieval India under Mohammadan Rule (A.D. 712-1764). Reprint. Lahore. - BUSSAGLI, M. Muslim art in India, and the Indo-Islamic School. In 5000 years of the art of India. M. Bussagli & C. Sivaramamurti (eds) New York.

The authors of the above literature are established as the foremost scholars of the subject. Even a cursory look at these books will reveal that the statements made by Ms. Christensen are rather erroneous.

* quoting P.N. Oak's arguments relating to the absurd claims that the Taj Mahal was build as a Hindu temple many centuries before the Mughals established an empire in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent. [Any person who is even vaguely familiar with the architectural developments under the patronage of Muslim rulers in India would discard the argument's put forth by Oak as the figment of a bizarre imagination].

The following book represents over ten years of highly scholarly work on the Taj Mahal by Prof. W.E Begley and would provide Ms. Christensen and the readers of her article results a scientific investigation disclaiming the arguments put forth by Oak.

Begley, W.E. and Z.A Desai. 1989. Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb. The University of Washington Press. 320 pages.

In addition, the following pioneering and exhaustive work on the history and architecture of the Taj Mahal by Dr. M. A. Chaghtai (based on a Ph. D. thesis) will provide sufficient information to totally disregard Oak's fiction.

Chaghtai, M.A. 1938. La Tadj Mahal d'Agra. Brussels.

I apologize for not being able provide a summary of the literature I have provided above due to lack of time. However, I felt it to be my duty to bring this literature to the attention of Ms. Christensen and other readers of this website.

-- posted by Nuz

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» pseudoerasmus - Hmm. I had never seen this article before

Hmm. I had never seen this article before, or else I would have commented upon it. I have to agree Nuz. I'm not sure where Maria Christenson got the idea that Shah Jahan was intolerant, for he was unlike his son Aurangzeb known as among the more tolerant Mughal rulers. Shah Jahan, being a strict Muslim in his personal life, never got the reputation for tolerance that Akbar and Jahangir got. (In the case of Akbar,

As for the Taj Mahal "controversy", Nuz is right: it doesn't exist, at least among serious scholars. Innocent as she apparently is of contemporary subcontinental politics, Maria Christenson has yielded to the temptation for providing a spurious balance and includes one of the wilder claims of Hindu fundamentalist pseudoscholarship that is now proliferating on the Web and elsewhere.

Besides the patently preposterous notion that the Taj Mahal was once a Hindu temple, she'll be able to find other crank claims by Hindu fundamentalist pseudoscholars, such as that (1) the Aryan invasions of India never took place and the linguistic/anthropological division between Aryans and Dravidians is a Western lie; (2) the linguistic category called Dravidian languages is a Western lie, and Tamil, Kannada, etc. are descended from Sanskrit just as much as Hindi, Gujarati and Bengali; (3) Urdu and Hindi have different roots; and (4) the Pythagorean theorem (along with countless other mathematical and scientific discoveries ordinarily attributed to Arabs or Greeks) was actually discovered and proven by ancient Hindus.

There are many many such crank claims, wholly dismissed by reputable scholars in the field.

-- posted by pseudoerasmus

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