Who built the Taj?

Colonial missionaries went to great lengths to prove that the Taj Mahal was designed by an Italian architect. An excerpt from a forthcoming book by Bishan Kapoor

The Taj Mahal, regarded as the apex of Indian art and culture and symbol of India's past glory, is erroneously thought to have been designed by a European.

This myth was fostered during British rule to belittle the best in Indian art and culture. It was suggested that the designer of this "Dream in Marble" was none other than a Venetian who was in the employment of the Moghul Court. They pointed to his tomb in Agra.

The fiction of the designer of the magnificent monument being an Italian had been based on a passing reference of a wandering Spanish monk, Father Manrique, who visited Agra in 1640, and saw the Taj under construction. While he was in Lahore, he met Father Joseph de Castre, who revealed that the architect of the Taj was an Italian by the name of Veroneo. He had died a few months before Manrique's arrival.

After describing Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, Manrique in his book Itinerario de las missions Da India Oriental goes on to describe the Taj and observes, "The architect of these works was a Venetian by name Geronimo Veroneo, who had come to this part in a Portuguese ship and died in the city of Lahore just before I reached it."

Taking the cue from this statement, catholic missionaries laboured hard to prove that the Turco-Indian designer, Ustad Isa Affendi, as has been mentioned in the celebrated book Tarikh-i-Taj, and Veroneo are the same person. One missionary, Father Hosten, wrote: "It is rather puzzling that Manrique's story should be treated as an obscure romance, as a legend, when on the other hand Ustad Isa of whom we know rather less, should without more ado be proclaimed the original architect."

Another missionary, father Hyacinth, pursued this queer logic to an even more illogical conclusion by saying, "could Veroneo himself not be Ustad Isa, viz. Veroneo the Christian Master?" Ustad is an Urdu word which means a master, and Isa is the Persian for Jesus, from which has derived the term Isai, or a Christian.

After an arduous search, Father Hyacinth ultimately found out the grave of Veroneo, lying hidden in a 400-year-old Catholic cemetery in Agra. He goes on to write, "I,  in one of my frequent visits to the cemetery in search of this grave sat one day on a sarcophagus of stone and with my forefinger I tried several times to make out as a blind man would do the meaning of the epitaph. I could not read it with my eyes, but at least succeeded in deciphering it as follows: A-QUI-IAZ-IERNIMO-VERO-NEO-FALECO-EM-LAMDR-2-O AGOSTO DE — 1640. I divulged the fact to the Agra fathers and my friends."

Despite such excitement over the discovery of Veroneo's tomb and the claim of his being the designer of the Taj, the fact remained that Manrique's statement could never be corroborated by any other contemporary European traveller in India.

Peter Munday, who was stationed at the English house in Agra, mentions Veroneo as a goldsmith in Shah Jahan's court. Sir Richard C Temple, in the introduction of Peter Munday's Travels, writes, "it is noteworthy, however, that though this building (Taj) was in the course of construction while Munday was in residence at Agra and Veroneo was personally known to him, he said nothing of the Italian's connection  with the work. Had Veroneo been the designer, it is unlikely that so accurate a chronicler as Munday would have failed to mention the fact. These details are of special interest as we have no other account of the Taj by an English traveller at this date."

Peter Munday calls Veroneo a Venetian and a goldsmith. W Foster mentions him in his diary in 1637 as an Italian jeweler.