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/wiki/File:Indian-dancer-nataraja.png /wiki/File:Indian-dancer-nataraja.png /wiki/File:Indian-dancer-nataraja.png Bharatanatyam, one of eight designated classical dance forms of India India's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality. India is the only country in the world to have so many religions and beliefs. The culture of India is an amalgamation of these diverse sub-cultures spread all over the Indian subcontinent and traditions that are several millennia old.[1] Regarded by many historians as the "oldest living civilization of Earth", the Indian tradition dates back to 8000 BC[2] and has a continuous recorded history since the time of the Vedas, believed variously to be 3,000 to over 5,500 years ago.[3] Several elements of India's diverse culture such as Indian religions, yoga and Indian cuisine have had a profound impact across the world.

Religions and spirituality

/wiki/File:Maitreya_Buddha_the_next_Buddha.jpg /wiki/File:Maitreya_Buddha_the_next_Buddha.jpg /wiki/File:Maitreya_Buddha_the_next_Buddha.jpg /wiki/File:Maitreya_Buddha_the_next_Buddha.jpgClose-up of a statue depicting Maitreya at the Thikse Monastery in Ladakh, India. Dharmic religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, are indigenous to India.[4] Main articles: Religion in India and Indian religions India is the birth place of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, collectively known as Indian religions.[5] Indian religions, also known as Dharmic religions are a major form of world religions along with Abrahamic ones. Today, Hinduism and Buddhism are the world's third- and fourth-largest religions respectively, with over 2 billion followers altogether, and possibly as many as 2.5 or 2.6 billion followers. India is also the birthplace for the Lingayat and Ahmadiyya faiths. India is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world, with some of the most deeply religious societies and cultures. Religion still plays a central and definitive role in the life of many of its people. The religion of 80% of the people is Hinduism. Islam is practiced by around 13% of all Indians. [10] Sikhism, Jainism and especially Buddhism are influential not only in India but across the world. Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and the Bah' Faith are also influential but their numbers are smaller. Despite the strong role of religion in Indian life, atheism and agnostics also have visible influence along with a self-ascribed tolerance to other people. According to industry consultant Eugene M. Makar, traditional Indian culture is defined by a relatively strict social hierarchy. He also mentions that from an early age, children are reminded of their roles and places in society.[11] This is reinforced by the fact that many believe gods and spirits have an integral and functional role in determining their life.[11] Several differences such as religion divide the culture.[11] However, a far more powerful division is the traditional Hindu bifurcation into non-polluting and polluting occupations.[11] Strict social taboos have governed these groups for thousands of years.[11] In recent years, particularly in cities, some of these lines

have blurred and sometimes even disappeared.[11] Important family relations extend as far as gotra, the mainly patrilinear lineage or clan assigned to a Hindu at birth.[11] In rural areas & sometimes in urban areas as well, it is common that three or four generations of the family live under the same roof.[11] The patriarch often resolves family issues.[11]

Marriage
Main articles: Arranged marriage in India and Women in India

/wiki/File:HinduBrideIndia.jpg /wiki/File:HinduBrideIndia.jpg /wiki/File:HinduBrideIndia.jpg /wiki/File:HinduBrideIndia.jpgA bride during a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony in Punjab. Family plays a significant role in the Indian culture. For generations, India has had a prevailing tradition of the joint family system. It is a system under which extended members of a family parents, children, the childrens spouses and their offspring, etc. live together. Usually, the eldest male member is the head in the joint Indian family system. He makes all important decisions and rules, and other family members abide by them. [12]

[edit] Arranged Marriage

For centuries, arranged marriages have been the tradition in Indian society though men and women have always had the choice of who they want to marry. Even today, the vast majority of Indians have their marriages planned by their parents and other respected family-members, with the consent of the bride and groom. Arranged matches are made after taking into account factors such as age, height, personal values and tastes, the backgrounds of their families (wealth, social standing), their castes and the astrological compatibility of the couples' horoscopes.Generally this is done to reduce culture shock for the bride and groom as most families are extended families. In most marriages the bride's family provide a dowry to the bride to safe guard herself and her children in the event of her husband passing prematurely. In most families the inheritance of family estates pass down the male line. In India, the marriage is thought to be for life,[13] and the divorce rate is extremely low 1.1% compared with about 50% in the United States.[14] The arranged marriages generally have a much lower divorce rate, although divorce rates have risen significantly in recent years for love marriage.[citation needed] The divorce rates of marriage is increasing nowadays (3.5%)[citation needed]

"Opinion is divided over what the phenomenon means: for traditionalists the rising numbers portend the breakdown of society while, for some modernists, they speak of a healthy new empowerment for women."[15]

Namaste
Namaste, namaskar or Namaskara or Namaskaram, Vanakkam (Tamil), Nomoshkaar (Bengali), Nomoskar[(Assamese)]or Sat Sri Akaal (Punjabi) is a common spoken greeting or salutation in the Indian subcontinent. Namaskar is considered a slightly more formal version than Namaste but both express deep respect. It is commonly used in India and Nepal by Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and many continue to use this outside the Indian subcontinent. In Indian and Nepali culture, the word is spoken at the beginning of written or verbal communication. However, the same hands folded gesture is made usually wordlessly upon departure. Taken literally, it means "I bow to you". The word is derived from Sanskrit (namah): to bow, obeisance, reverential salutation, and respect, and (te): "to you". As explained by an Indian scholar, in literal terms Namaste refers to 'That which is of God in me bows to that which is of God in you'. Also in orthodox families, younger men and women are taught to seek the blessing of their elders by reverentially bowing to their elders.

Festivals

/wiki/File:Radha_celebrating_Holi,_c1788.jpg /wiki/File:Radha_celebrating_Holi,_c1788.jpg /wiki/File:Radha_celebrating_Holi,_c1788.jpg Radha and gopikas celebrating Holi, known as the "festival of colors". Main article: Festivals in India India, being a multi-cultural and multi-religious society, celebrates holidays and festivals of various religions. The four national holidays in India, the Independence Day, the Republic Day, the Gandhi Jayanti,and 1st may are celebrated with zeal and enthusiasm across India. In addition, many states and regions have local festivals depending on prevalent religious and linguistic demographics. Popular religious festivals include the Hindu festivals of Navratri, Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Durga puja, Holi, Rakshabandhan and Dussehra. Several harvest festivals, such as Sankranthi, Pongal, Raja sankaranti swinging fesival, and Onam,"Nuakhai" are also fairly popular. Certain festivals in India are celebrated by multiple religions. Notable examples include Diwali, which is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, and Buddh Purnima, celebrated by Buddhists and Hindus. Islamic festivals, such Eid ul-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Ramadhan, are celebrated by

Muslims across India.Muslims won't celebrate any other fest except these two. Sikh Festivals, such as Guru Nanak Jayanti, Baisakhi are celebrated with full fanfare by Sikhs and Hindu. Adding colors to the culture of India, the Dree Festival is one of the tribal festivals of India celebrated by the Apatanis of the Ziro valley of Arunachal Pradesh, which is the easternmost state of India.

Names and language

Indian names are based on a variety of systems and naming conventions, which vary from region to region. Names are also influenced by religion and caste and may come from the Indian epics. India's population speaks a wide variety of languages

Clothing

/wiki/File:Styles_of_Sari.jpg /wiki/File:Styles_of_Sari.jpg /wiki/File:Styles_of_Sari.jpg /wiki/File:Styles_of_Sari.jpgIllustration of different styles of Sari & clothing worn by women in India. Traditional clothing in India greatly varies across different parts of the country and is influenced immensely by local culture, geography and climate. Popular styles of dress include draped garments such as sari for women and dhoti or lungi for men; in addition, stitched clothes such as churidar for women and kurta-pyjama and European-style trousers and shirts for men, are also popular. In India, a person's social status is perceived to be symbolized by his or her attire. Indian dress

etiquette discourages exposure of skin and wearing transparent or tight clothes.[23] Most Indian clothes are made from cotton which is ideal for the region's hot weather.[24] Since India's weather is mostly hot and rainy, majority of Indians wear sandals.[25] Worn by women on their forehead, the bindi is considered to be a highly auspicious mark in Hindu religion.[26] Traditionally, the red bindi (or sindoor) was worn only by the married Hindu women, but now it has become a part of women's fashion. Some Indian traditions consider the bindi to be representative of the third eye.[27] India's clothing styles have continuously evolved over the course of the country's history. Ancient Vedic texts mention clothes made from barks and leaves (known as phataka). The 11th century BC Rig-veda mentions dyed and embroidered garments (known as paridhan and pesas respectively) and thus highlights the development of sophisticated garment manufacturing techniques during the Vedic age.[28] In 5th century BC, Greek historian Herodotus describes the richness of the quality of Indian cotton clothes.[29] By 2nd century AD, muslins manufactured in southern India were imported by the Roman Empire and silk cloth was one of the major exports of ancient India along with Indian spices.[30] Stitched clothing in India was developed before 10th century AD and was further popularized in 15th century by Muslim empires in India.[30] Draped clothing styles remained popular with India's Hindu population while the Muslims increasingly adopted tailored garments.[31] During the British Raj, India's large clothing and handicrafts industry was left paralyzed so as to make place for British industrial cloth. Consequently, Indian independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi successfully advocated for what he termed as khadi clothing light colored hand-woven clothes so as to decrease reliance of the Indian people on British industrial goods.[32] The 1980s was marked by a widespread modification to Indian clothing fashions which was characterized by a large-scale growth of fashion schools in India, increasing involvement of women in the fashion industry and changing Indian attitudes towards multiculturalism. These developments played a pivotal role in the fusion of Indian and Western clothing styles.[33

Languages and literature

[edit] History

/wiki/File:Rigveda_MS2097.jpg /wiki/File:Rigveda_MS2097.jpg

/wiki/File:Rigveda_MS2097.jpg Rigveda (padapatha) manuscript in Devanagari, early 19th century. After a scribal benediction ("rgayanama ;; Aum(3) ;;"), the first line has the opening words of RV.1.1.1 (agni ; ie ; pura-hita ; yajasya ; deva ; tvija). The Vedic accent is marked by underscores and vertical overscores in red. Time is always referred as Kaala Chakra in India. In Ancient India the time was divided in Four yugas. The calendar which most Indians follows goes in accordance to this. There by, measuring the dates of Vedas came in later days. With its oldest core dating back to as early as 1500 BC,[34] the Rigvedic Sanskrit is one of the oldest attestations of any Indo-Iranian language, and one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the family which includes English and most European languages.[35] Sanskrit has had a profound impact on the languages and literature of India. Hindi, India's most spoken language, is a "Sanskritized register" of the Khariboli dialect. In addition, all modern Indo-Aryan languages, Munda languages and Dravidian languages, have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhava words).[36] Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated to constitute roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages,[37] and the literary forms of (Dravidian) Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.[36] Part of the Eastern IndoAryan languages, the Bengali language arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages and its roots are traced to the 5th century BC Ardhamagadhi language. Tamil, one of India's major classical languages, descends from Proto-Dravidian languages which was spoken around the third millennium BC in peninsular India. Tamil literature has existed for over two thousand years[40] and the earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BC.[41] Another major Dravidian language, Kannada is attested epigraphically from the mid-1st millennium AD, and literary Old Kannada flourished in the 9th to 10th century Rashtrakuta Dynasty. Pre-old Kannada (or Purava HaleGannada) was the language of Banavasi in the early Common Era, the Satavahana and Kadamba periods and hence has a history of over 2000 years. The Ashoka rock edict found at Brahmagiri (dated to 230 BC) has been suggested to contain a word in identifiable Kannada.[46] According to 2001 India census, Hindi is the most spoken language in India, followed by Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil.[47] In contemporary Indian literature, there are two major literary awards; these are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Jnanpith Award. Seven Jnanpith awards each have been awarded in Kannada, six in Hindi, five in Bengali, four in Malayalam, three each in Marathi, Gujarati, Urdu and Oriya and two each in Telugu and Tamil,. [48]

Standard Hindi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Hindi) l "Hindi" redirects here. For other uses, see Hindi (disambiguation).

Standard Hindi Mnak Hind / wiki/File:W ord_Hindi_i n_Devanag ari.svg

/wiki/File:W ord_Hindi_i n_Devanag ari.svg The word "Hindi" in Devanagari script India Signi fican t com muni ties in Sout h Afric a, US, Cana da, Nepa l 180 milli on in 1991

Spoken in

Native speakers

[1] IndoEuro pean

Indo

Ir a n ia n

Language family

Writing system Official status Official language in Regulated by In dia Centr al Hind i Direc torat e Deva nagar i

(Indi a)[2] Language codes ISO 639-1 ISO 639-2 ISO 639-3 Linguist List Linguaspher e
hi hin hin hinhin 59AAFqf

/ wiki/Fi le:Exa mple. of.co mplex .text.r enderi ng.sv This page contains Indic text. g Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and /wiki/F a lack of conjuncts. More... ile:Ex ample .of.co mplex .text.r enderi ng.sv g Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi (Devanagari: ), High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi. It is the official language of the Republic of India. Colloquial Hindi is mutually intelligible with another register of Hindustani called Urdu. Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialized contexts which rely on educated vocabulary. Due to religious nationalism and communal tensions, speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert that they are distinct languages, despite the fact that native speakers generally cannot tell

the colloquial languages apart[citation needed]. The combined population of Hindi-Urdu speakers is the fourth largest in the world.[3] However, the number of native speakers of Standard Hindi is unclear. According to the 2001 Indian census,[4] 258 million people in India reported their native language to be "Hindi". However, this includes large numbers of speakers of Hindi dialects besides Standard Hindi; as of 2009, the best figure Ethnologue could find for Khariboli Hindi was a 1991 citation of 180 million.[1]

Official status
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

/wiki/File:Indoarische_Sprachen_Gruppen.png /wiki/File:Indoarische_Sprachen_Gruppen.png /wiki/File:Indoarische_Sprachen_Gruppen.png /wiki/File:Indoarische_Sprachen_Gruppen.pngIndo-Aryan languages, grouping according to SIL Ethnologue, Hindi is among the languages of the central zone: Central zone Northern zone Northwestern zone Eastern zone Southern zone Insular (Southern) The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of India. Hindi is also enumerated as one of the twenty-two languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which entitles it to representation on the Official Language Commission.[5] The Constitution of India has stipulated the usage of Hindi and English to be the

two languages of communication for the Central Government. Most of government documentation is prepared in three languages of English, Hindi, and the official state language. It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government by 1965 (per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351),[6] with state governments being free to function in languages of their own choice. However, widespread resistance movements to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, of especially the people living in south India (such as the Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963), which provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes. Therefore, English is still used in official documents, in courts, etc. However, the constitutional directive to the central government to champion the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced the policies of the Union government. At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following states in India:Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi & Maharashtra . Each of these states may also designate a "co-official language"; in Uttar Pradesh for instance, depending on the political formation in power, sometimes this language is Urdu. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language in several states.

History
Further information: History of Hindustani The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is khariboli, the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding western Uttar Pradesh and southern Uttarakhand region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire (17th century) and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court." After independence, the Government of India set about standardising Hindi as a separate language from Urdu, instituting the following conventions:[original research?]
standardization of grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare

a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"

standardization of the orthography, using the Devanagari script, by the Central Hindi

Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing, to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters, and introducing diacritics to express sounds from other languages.

standardization of vocabulary, replacing most of the more learned Persian loan words with new coinages from Sanskrit. (See next.) Alphabet and vocabulary There are five principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:
Tatsam ( / same as that) words: These are words which are spelled the same in Hindi

as in Sanskrit (except for the absence of final case inflections).[7] They include words inherited from Sanskrit via Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g.

Hindustani nm/Sanskrit nma, "name"; Hindustani Suraj/Sanskrit Surya, "sun"),[8] as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. prrthan, "prayer").[9] Pronunciation, however, conforms to Hindi norms and may differ from that of classical Sanskrit. Among nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit uninflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
Ardhatatsam () words: These are words that were borrowed from Sanskrit in the

middle Indo-Aryan or early New Indo-Aryan stages.[citation needed] Such words typically have undergone sound changes subsequent to being borrowed.

Tadbhav ( / born of that) words: These are words which are spelled differently from

Sanskrit but are derivable from a Sanskrit prototype by phonological rules (e.g. Sanskrit karma, "deed" becomes Pali kamma, and eventually Hindi km, "work").[7]
Deshaj () words: These are words that were not borrowings but do not derive from

attested Indo-Aryan words either. Belonging to this category are onomatopoetic words.

Videsh () words: these include all words borrowed from sources other than IndoAryan. The most frequent sources of borrowing in this category have been Persian, Arabic, Portuguese and English.

Literature
Main article: Hindi literature Hindi literature, is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional Kabir, Raskhan); Shringar (beauty Keshav, Bihari); Veer-Gatha (extolling brave warriors); and Adhunik (modern). Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems. It was not written in the current dialect but in other Hindi languages, particularly in Avadhi and Braj Bhasha, but later also in Khariboli. During the British Raj, Hindustani became the prestige dialect. Hindustani with heavily Sanskritized vocabulary or Sahityik Hindi (Literary Hindi) was popularized by the writings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Hindustani popular among the educated people. Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in the Hindi prose literature was Munshi Premchand, who is considered as the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement...... The Dwivedi Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing the Modern Hindi language in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love. In the 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as Chhayavaad (shadowism) and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as Chhayavaadi.

Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chhayavaadi poets. Uttar Adhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chhayavaadi movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.

Epics

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/wiki/File:Kurukshetra.jpg /wiki/File:Kurukshetra.jpgManuscript illustration of the Battle of Kurukshetra. The Rmyaa and the Mahbhrata are the oldest preserved and well-known epics of India. Versions have been adopted as the epics of Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The Ramayana consists of 24,000 verses in seven books (kas) and 500 cantos (sargas),[49] and tells the story of Rama (an incarnation or Avatar of the Hindu preservergod Vishnu), whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon king of Lanka, Ravana. This epic played a pivotal role in establishing the role of dhrma as a principal ideal guiding force for Hindu way of life.[50] The earliest parts of the Mahabharata text date to 400 BC[50] and is estimated to have reached its final form by the early Gupta period (ca. 4th c. AD).[51] Other regional variations of these, as well as unrelated epics include the Tamil Ramavataram, Kannada Pampa Bharata, Hindi Ramacharitamanasa, and Malayalam Adhyathmaramayanam. In addition to these two great Indian epics, there are five major epics in the classical Tamil language Silappatikaram, Manimekalai, Civaka-cintamaniand Valayapathi Dance in India covers a wide range of dance and dance theatre forms, from the ancient classical or temple dance to folk and modern styles. Three best-known Hindu deities, Shiva, Kali and Krishna, are typically represented dancing. There are hundreds of Indian folk dances such as Bhangra, Bihu, Ghumura Dance, Sambalpuri, Chhau and Garba and special dances observed in regional festivals. India offers a number of classical Indian dance forms, each of which can be traced to different parts of the country. The presentation of Indian dance styles in film, Hindi Cinema, has exposed the range of dance in India to a global audience.The gods and goddesses are invoked through the religious folk dance forms from good old times. Mention may be made of Ram-lila Nach, Kirtaniya Nach, Kunjvasi Nach and Naradi Nach, Bhagata Nach, Vidapat Nach and Puja Art Nach in this category. Minimum use is made of musical instruments and dancer performs the dances without humming the tune

Architecture of India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia l

/wiki/File:Taj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpg /wiki/File:Taj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpg /wiki/File:Taj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpg /wiki/File:Taj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpgThe Taj Mahala UNESCO World Heritage Sitein Agra.

/wiki/File:Konark_Sub_Temple_Front_view.jpg /wiki/File:Konark_Sub_Temple_Front_view.jpg /wiki/File:Konark_Sub_Temple_Front_view.jpg Konark Sun Temple, one of the most well renowned temples in India and is a World Heritage Site. The architecture of India is rooted in its history, culture and religion.[1] Indian architecture progressed with time and assimilated the many influences that came as a result of India's global discourse with other regions of the world throughout its millennia-old past.[1] The architectural methods practiced in India are a result of examination and implementation of its established building traditions and outside cultural interactions.[1] Though old, this Eastern tradition has also incorporated modern values as India became a modern nation state.[1] The economic reforms of 1991 further bolstered the urban architecture of India as the country became more integrated with the world's economy.[1] Traditional Vastu Shastra remains influential in India's architecture during the contemporary era.[1]

Islamic influence and Mughal Era (1526 CE-1857 CE)

In the August of 1604 CE the construction of the Harmandir Sahibthe holiest shrine of the Sikh religionwas completed. Further information: Mughal architecture and Indo-Islamic architecture

Qutub Minar a prominent example of Islamic architecture in India.

Mughal tombs of sandstone and marble show Persian influence.[26] The Red Fort at Agra (1565 74) and the walled city of Fatehpur Sikri (156974) are among the architectural achievements of this timeas is the Taj Mahal, built as a tomb for Queen Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan (1628 58).[26] Employing the double dome, the recessed archway, white marble and parks while stressing on symmetry and detail was visible during the reign of Shah Jahan.[27] Quranic verses were described on the walls of the buildings.[1] However, the depiction of any living beingan essential part of the pre-Islamic tradition of Indiawas forbidden under Islam.[1] Some scholars hold that cultural contact with Europe under Manuel I of Portugal (reign: October 25, 1495December 13, 1521) resulted in exchange of architectural influences.[28] Little literary evidence exists to confirm the Indian influence but some scholars have nonetheless suggested a possible relation based on proximity of architectural styles.[28]