Directions (Q. No. 106 - 110) :

Read the passage below and answer the following questions.

The Taj Mahal has become one of the world's best known monuments. This domed white marble structure is situated on a high plinth at the southern end of four-quartered garden, evoking the gardens of paradise, enclosed within walls measuring 305 by 549 meters. Outside the walls, in an area known as Mumtazabad, were living quarters for attendants, markets, serais and other structures built by local merchants and nobles. The tomb complex and other imperial structures of Mumtazabad were maintained by the income of thirty villages given specifically for tomb's support.

The name Taj Mahal is unknown in Mughal chronicles, but it is used by contemporary Europeans in India, suggesting that this was the tomb's popular name. In contemporary texts it is generally called simply the Illuminated Tomb (Rauza-i-Munawara). Mumtaz Mahal died shortly after delivering her fourteenth child in 1631. The Mughal court was then residing in Burhanpur. Her remains were temporarily buried by the griefstricken emperor in a spacious garden known as Zainabad on the bank of the river Tapti. Six months later her body was transported to Agra where it was inferred in land chosen for the mausoleum.

This land, situated, South of the Mughal city on the bank of the Jamuna, had belonged to the Kachhwaha rajas since the times of Raja Man Singh and was purchased from the then current Raja, Jai Singh. Although contemporary chronicles indicate Jai Singh's willing cooperation in this exchange, extant imperial commands indicate that the final price was not settled until almost two years after the mausoleum's commencement. Jai Singh's further cooperation was insured by imperial orders issued between 1632 and 1634 demanding that he provide stone masons and carts to transport marble from the mines from Makrana, within his 'ancestral domain', to Agra where both the Taj Mahal and Shah Jahan's additions to the Agra fort were constructed concurrently.

Work on the mausoleum was commenced early in 1632. Inscriptional evidence indicates much of tomb was completed by 1636. By 1643, when Shah Jahan most lavishly celebrated the 'Urs ceremony for Mumtaz Mahal', the entire complex was virtually complete.