3-028-380 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Indian Architecture: colonnade of Hindu pillars near the Kootub, at Delhi, (eleventh century), 1870. Engraving of a photograph by Samuel Bourne. 'The forms are somewhat cumbrous and inelegant. The ornament, like all Indian ornament, is very elaborate, and from the base of each column to its capital there is not a space in which some kind of carving is not to be found. Authorities have doubts as to the site and arrangement of these pillars. The present position they occupy seems not to have been their original one...Until within the last three years, the fine monumental architecture to be found throughout India appears to have been wholly neglected by the [British] Government authorities; but, thanks to Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir John Lawrence, to the Duke of Argyll, and especially to the present Viceroy, the Earl of Mayo, a public interest in the subject is awakening which, it is hoped, will rescue these historical monuments from oblivion and the spoliation of war, railways, roadmaking, and ignorant apathy, and spare this country the disgrace of neglecting the arts of a country which it rules...From time to time travellers have made rough sketches and hasty excavations of these ruins, but no precise survey of them has been made hitherto'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.