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Every foot of the walls, every column and panel, is elaborately embellished with flowers, leaves, scrolls, and sentences, and these are inlaid in jasper, bloodstone, jade, onyx, and precious stones. Arjamand's tomb blossoms with never-fading Persian flowers and Arabic sentences extolling her character, and is as marvelous in workmanship as if produced by Florentine inlayers of the present time.

Whether Benedetto stood amazed and confounded at such an event, in the presence of so many nobles, let every one judge for himself." A famous family of wood inlayers were the del Tasso, who came from S. Gervasio. One of the brothers, Giambattista, was a wag, and is said to have wasted much time in amusement and standing about criticizing the methods of others.

The art of inlaying stone had been practised in India for many years before this building; but here, for the first time, do we find the inlayers making attempts at direct imitation of Persian pottery decoration.

Inlayers from Kanauj, with fingers like those of the Spirits that bowed before Solomon the King, who should make beautiful the pure stone with inlay of jewels, as did their forefathers for the Rajah of Mewar; mighty dealers with agate, cornelian, and lapis lazuli.

The same mode of work is employed by the Bembex-, Stizus-and Tachytes-wasps and other inlayers, who strengthen the inadequate woof of their cocoons with grains of sand; only, in their cotton-wool purses, the Anthidium's grubs substitute for the mineral particles the only solid materials at their disposal. For them, excrement takes the place of pebbles. And the work goes none the worse for it.

It is quite possible that some Italians may have shown the native inlayers specimens of Florentine pietra dura, and suggested to them this naturalistic treatment, but if Italians or other Europeans had been engaged to instruct or supervise in the decoration of these buildings they would certainly have left some traces of their handiwork.