tan Mahomed Adil Shah lies under a plain slab of marble, is an
almost perfect hemisphere, which encloses the largest domed space in the
world, and it dominates the Deccan tableland just as the dome of St.
Peter's dominates the Roman Campagna. To such heights Hindu architecture
can never soar, for it eschews the arched dome; and beautiful as the
Hindu cupola may be with its concentric mouldings and the superimposed
circular courses horizontally raised on an octagonal architrave which
rests on symmetrical groups of pillars, it cannot attain anything like
the same bold span or the same lofty elevation. Have we not there a
symbol of the fundamental antagonism between Hindu and Mahomedan
conceptions in many other domains than that of architecture? Even if the
Arabs did not originate the pointed arch, it has always been one of the
most beautiful and characteristic features of Mahomedan architecture.
The Hindu, on the other hand, has never built any such arch except
under compulsion.

To unite India under Mahomedan rule and attempt to bridge the gulf that
divided the alien race of Mahomedan conquerors from the conquered Hindus
required more stedfast hands and a loftier genius than those Mahomedan
_condottieri_ possessed. A new power more equal to the task was already
storming at the northern gates of India. On a mound thirty-five miles
north of Delhi, near the old bed of the Jumna, there still stands a
small town which has thrice given its name to one of those momentous
battles that decide the fate of nations. It is Panipat. There, on April
21, 1526, Baber the Lion, fourth in descent from Timur, overthrew the
last of the Lodis. Like his terrible ancestor, he had fought his way
down from Central Asia at the head of a great army of Tartar horsemen;
but, unlike Timur, he fought not for mere plunder and slaughter, but for
empire. He has left us in his own memoirs an incomparable picture of his
remarkable and essentially human personality, and it was his
statesmanship as much as his prowess that laid the rough foundations
upon which the genius of his grandson Akbar was to rear the great fabric
of the Moghul Empire as it was to stand for two centuries. Though it was
at Delhi that, three days after the battle of Panipat, Baber proclaimed
himself Emperor, no visible monument of his reign is to be seen there
to-day. But the white marble dome and lofty walls and terraces of his
son Humayun's mausoleum, raised on a lofty platform out of a