The Taj has been the subject of numberless critical essays, but many of them have missed the mark entirely, because the writers have not been sufficiently conversant with the spirit of Eastern artistic thought.  All comparisons with the Parthenon or other classic buildings are useless.  One cannot compare Homer with the Mahabharata, or Kalidas with Euripides.  The Parthenon was a temple for Pallas Athene, an exquisite casket to contain the jewel.  The Taj is the jewel—­the ideal itself.  Indian architecture is in much closer affinity to the great conceptions of the Gothic builders than it is to anything of classic or Renaissance construction.  The Gothic cathedral, with its sculptured arches and its spires pointing heavenwards, is a symbol, as most Eastern buildings are symbols.  The Mogul artists, being prevented by the precepts of the Muhammadan religion from attempting sculpture, as understood in Europe, succeeded in investing their great architectural monuments with an extraordinary personal character.  There is a wonderful personality in the dignity and greatness of Akbar’s tomb; we see the scholar and the polished courtier in Itmad-ud-daulah’s.  But the Taj carries this idea of personality further than had been attempted in any of the Mogul monuments; it represents in art the highest development towards individualism, the struggle against the restraints of ritualism and dogma, which Akbar initiated in religion.

Every one who has seen the Taj must have felt that there is something in it, difficult to define or analyze, which differentiates it from all other buildings in the world.  Sir Edwin Arnold has struck the true note of criticism in the following lines:—­

    “Not Architecture! as all others are,
    But the proud passion of an Emperor’s love
    Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars
    With body of beauty shrining soul and thought;
               ...  As when some face
    Divinely fair unveils before our eyes—­
    Some woman beautiful unspeakably—­
    And the blood quickens, and the spirit leaps,
    And will to worship bends the half-yielded knees,
    While breath forgets to breathe.  So is the Taj!”

This is not a mere flight of poetic fancy, but a deep and true interpretation of the meaning of the Taj.  What were the thoughts of the designers, and of Shah Jahan himself, when they resolved to raise a monument of eternal love to the Crown of the Palace—­Taj Mahal?  Surely not only of a mausoleum—­a sepulchre fashioned after ordinary architectural canons, but of an architectonic ideal, symbolical of her womanly grace and beauty.  Those critics who have objected to the effeminacy of the architecture unconsciously pay the highest tribute to the genius of the builders.  The Taj was meant to be feminine.  The whole conception, and every line and detail of it, express the intention of the designers.  It is Mumtaz Mahal herself, radiant in her youthful beauty, who still lingers on the banks of the shining Jumna, at early morn, in the glowing midday sun, or in the silver moonlight.  Or rather, we should say, it conveys a more abstract thought; it is India’s noble tribute to the grace of Indian womanhood—­the Venus de Milo of the East.