We are living in a time when, in popular parlance, designs and motifs like domes, arches, and minarets have come to symbolize ‘Islamic’ architecture, whereas signs of veneration and embellishment like the sun, the lotus, and many other aesthetic carvings are supposed to reflect ‘Hindu’ cultural sensibilities. Pushing back against this exclusionary binary is Sohail Hashmi, the author of the new book titled The Music of Stones. For anyone who has attended Hashmi’s famed Delhi heritage walks is fully aware of his ingenious and humble submissions of looking at architectural history in a more inclusive, organic manner. Hashmi has been a tireless crusader against the idea of understanding architecture as a theological construct. Emphasizing the role of climate, material and technology in the shaping of architecture, Hashmi makes a persuasive case to dispel myths around viewing medieval South Asian architecture as ‘Islamic’.
Hashmi begins his exposition by underlining the centrality of vessels for votive offerings since antiquity. As these were used for sundry ordinary activities, including as containers for storing seeds for agricultural purposes, they were also seen as vessels containing life within them. This idea of a vessel containing forms of unborn life shares parallels with the womb, which earned the vessel the name garbha kalasha. Why is this historical trajectory important for Hashmi? In practically all the Sultanate and Mughal monuments in South Asia, we come across the vessel, or the kalasha, engraved on the walls or the beams of these buildings. Similarly, we also come across motifs that resemble the nagas from some ancient Indian traditions. Likewise, primarily to enhance the beauty and grandeur of these buildings, the lotus was used exponentially as not only the primary aesthetic tool of embellishment but also because of the pious role it plays in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. As Hashmi notes, the lotus is the sacred throne of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh, and at the same time, it is also omnipresent in Buddhist and Jain mythology.
Hashmi’s logical submission is that even if buildings were designed by Turkish or Iranian architects, they were all built by local masons. The masons embellished these sacred sites according to their own acquired understanding of aesthetic piety.
These can be understood by how the masons, for example, thought that the hemisphere of the dome, even if it represented the idea of the heavens in the Central Asian imagination, looked aesthetically incomplete, which in turn they adorned with a lotus on top of the dome. This hinted at the sacred space the lotus carries in the Indian imagination. To give another example, Hashmi points out the presence of the amalaka (a wheel with a serrated edge, which we normally see on the top of Hindu temples), another seemingly out-of-place motif at Ghyasuddin Tughlaq’s mosque, an ‘Islamic’ building. Hashmi’s formulations hint at an interesting idea of the potential autonomy enjoyed by these masons to constantly experiment with their generational repository of aesthetic sensibilities. In his own words, this phase of experimentation can be viewed in its most visual sense at Nila Gumbad, behind Humayun’s tomb, where on top of the dome sits ‘a lotus shaped crown, on top of which sits an upright lotus, above that is an inverted lotus, followed by a final upside-down lotus, and midway through this lies the amalaka.’
Furthermore, there is a much denser exploration of the development of different forms of arches, beginning with the trabeated opening and coming down to the ‘true arch’, and how the local masons kept experimenting with these designs. As much as it is worth appreciating this focus on the creative labour of these masons, I would have liked to know more about these masons. Who were they? What was their socio-cultural background? Did they all come from a distinctly similar Hindu background from North India?
The story of seemingly ‘un-Islamic’ motifs on these buildings does not stop here. Hashmi continues his exploration by commenting on two more ‘Hinduized’ embellishments. One is the swastika, which Hashmi categorically asserts was central to votive offerings in ancient civilizations at Bali, Egypt, Greece and many more, hence revolting against the idea that the swastika had origins in India. As he does throughout the book, Hashmi provides an image juxtaposed to his example, which in this case is the presence of the swastika at Akbar’s mausoleum in Fatehpur Sikri. Another example of this kind is the ingenious projection of Gajalakshmi, without certain elements like the eyes and the ears. However, as an example of the subtle assertion of the masons, Hashmi believes that they still incorporated the Gajalakshmi as an aesthetic symbol by retaining the tusk of the elephant—arguably its most iconic visual element. By showing this being engraved in the Bara Gumbad in Lodi gardens, Hashmi once again brings out the intermeshing of various temporal and spatial sensibilities spanning across diverse cultures. He argues that the reason why all of this is important is that these architectural designs and motifs were not viewed as Hindu symbols by those who commissioned these buildings but were primarily understood as South Asian motifs.
Hashmi writes with a commanding authority and yet never projects himself as the final authority on the subject. His sentences are littered with open-ended premises like ‘My submission is that…’, ‘This may have been…’. We see this most prominently with an example of the six-cornered star that we see at multiple places in Humayun’s tomb. Does it resemble the Star of David, which is Israel’s emblem, or does it have anything to do with the Shakti Chakra, where, according to some Indian traditions, the triangle pointing upwards represents male energy, whereas the triangle pointing downwards represents feminine energy? There are no conclusive answers. At the same time, Hashmi is more interested in making us understand how cultural sensibilities travel, and how nobody can claim ownership of such motifs. This book offers a multitude of fascinating examples, spanning from the 12th to the 19th century, of such intricate histories that continue to beguile, as much as they nudge us to reflect and introspect. Hashmi’s hope is for the reader not to let genuine curiosity get overpowered by bigoted speculation.
Suraj Thube is Visiting Faculty, Department of Political Science, Ashoka University, Sonipat.