Bayana: reused stone, counted rather than argued about

Before you go

The route

• Cunningham's counts and readings are his own field notes from 1882-83 and are reported as his. Nothing here has been re-counted.
• This pilot deliberately reports what the 1880s record says about the use of these buildings and declines to say what is true of them now, because that was not established.
• No logistics in these records have been checked by a person. Fares, hours, fees and the safety and hassle scores are deliberately empty rather than estimated. That is Phase 3's work, not a gap to be filled from a desk.

1. 1

   Ukha Masjid اوکھا مسجد

   mosque · 50 min · 26.9065, 77.2862

   Stand here. In the eastern aisle, at the two large round shafts with the Hindu ornament cut off and a cusped arch still standing between them. That pair was once the entrance to a temple.

   A mosque built out of temples, counted pillar by pillar

   What the board says: That the Ukha Masjid at Bayana is a monument of the Delhi Sultanate period.

   Cunningham found this building in 1882-83 being used as a cattle yard, which is why it was locally called the Nohara. He gave it the name Ukha Masjid himself, for distinction, because the building touching it — of about the same size, and originally also a mosque — was by then called the Ukha Mandir.

   Its Arabic inscription over the entrance of the court was still generally legible, in bad condition, and recorded the erection of the mosque in the reign of Qutb-ud-din Mubarak in A.H. 720, or A.D. 1320. The whole occupies 124 feet east to west by 74 north to south, the mosque proper being five rows of Hindu pillars forming four aisles.

   At the nearby mosque at Kaman, Cunningham did something a guidebook never does: he counted. Fifty-two Hindu pillars built into the walls and roofs; ninety-six standing pillars of which the fifty-two taller ones are double; two hundred reused pillars in one building. He listed the deities he could still recognise on their faces before they were cut away — Kali, Ganesa, a four-armed Vishnu, Nara Sinha — along with crocodiles, peacocks, and nagas with intertwined snaky tails sitting at the corners. Reused stone is the most visible fact in this landscape and it is best met as a count rather than as an argument.

   Establish what this building and the one adjoining it are used for before you go. The 1880s answer is in the record; the present answer is not.

2. 2

   Ukha Minar (Lodi's Minar) اوکھا مینار

   other · 20 min · 26.9065, 77.2862

   Stand here. At the doorway, facing south-west. Everything carved on this tower is within reach of a standing person.

   A plain tower with a date on the door

   What the board says: That Lodi's Minar at Bayana is a 16th-century tower.

   Thirty-two feet north of the corner of the Ukha Mandir stands a round tower of cut stone, 41 feet high, tapering barely at all — 27 and a half feet across at the base and 26 at the top. Cunningham calls it perfectly plain, the entrance doorway being the only break in the smooth monotony of its surface. A circular staircase six feet wide runs to the top.

   All of the ornament is at the one place a person can reach. The doorway, four and a half feet wide, faces south-west; its pointed arch is filled with Quranic inscriptions that Cunningham found well cut and in good preservation, and just above the door runs a long inscription of nine lines of verse in a double column.

   The third line of that verse is the date: the name of Shah Ibrahim bin Iskandar Bahlol Shah, with A.H. 926 — the fourth year of Ibrahim Lodi's reign. A muezzin's tower, undecorated for forty feet, signed at the height of a hand.

   41 feet high and almost untapered — 27 and a half feet across at the base, 26 at the top.

What is not known here

Every stop on this trail has its logistics recorded as unverified, which means this page will not show you an opening time, a fare or a safety score. That is deliberate. Nobody has walked this route or telephoned anybody for these records, and a number invented at a desk is worse than no number on precisely the questions where being wrong costs the reader something.

• The pillar count is Cunningham's own, made at Kaman rather than at Bayana, and is quoted here as his. It has not been re-counted.
• Cunningham records that by his visit one of the two adjoining buildings had been turned into a temple and the other into a cattle-pen. That was the situation he described in the 1880s; what either building is used for now is unverified and should be established before anyone plans a visit.
• The A.H. 720 reading is Cunningham's, from a stone he calls very much injured.
• Cunningham's tour reports are field notes written fast. His counts are his own and are worth re-counting; his readings of inscriptions have been revised since.
• The reading of the nine-line verse inscription is Cunningham's and has not been checked against a modern epigraphic edition.