As the gardens of the Imperial palaces are nearly all transformed or destroyed, one must wander in the great lower garden of Pinjor, or visit the garden-palace of Deeg, to see the beauties and realise the charm of the Mughal gardens of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The chapter of Indian garden history which Babar opened at Agra closes at Pinjor with Fadai Khan, but only to reopen with the story of Hindu palace builders, foremost among whom was the Suraj Mal, Raja of Bharatpur, builder of Deeg. Commenced about the year 1725, this beautiful palace, unlike most of the Rajput palace-fortresses, is built on a perfectly level site. Water and the surrounding flat country, which was once a morass, formed the principal defences of Deeg. Its large pavilions and gardens are laid out, as Fergusson remarks, 'with a regularity which would satisfy the most fastidious Renaissance architect.' The whole garden-palace was to consist of an enclosure twice the length of its breadth, surrounded with buildings and divided into two parts by a broad terrace intended to carry the central pavilion and its fountains. Only one of these rectangles has been completed, measuring about 700 feet square.
The gardens, which are rich in sculptured fountains, watercourses, parterres, and other fine architectural ornaments, were meant to rival those of the Imperial Palace at Agra, which the Jats of Bharatpur captured and looted in 1765, two years after Suraj Mals death. Indeed some of the chabutras and marble thrones at Deeg are actually those taken from the Mughals. One wonders if the lovely white marble swing (Plate XXXVII.) also came from the palace gardens of Nur-Jahan and her niece Arjmand, the Beloved. The principal building is the Gopal Bhawan; the north side of which faces a large bathing tank, and with its balconies and open pavilions forms a beautiful water front. One of the great features of Deeg apart from the gardens is the fine roof terraces. The flat Indian roof, 'the best room of the house,' is here extended on all four sides beyond the walls of the building by a bracketed pierced stone cornice. Below this again there is the usual wide dripstone; and this unique combination gives a large roof space for promenading in the cool of the evening, and the richest effect of light and shade to the buildings in the sunshine. February and March are the months to see this lovely garden-palace, Suraj Mals fairy creation, at its best; when the fountains are playing, the flowering bushes are just coming out, the roses in the parterres are all in bloom, and the soft cool green of the mango, jaman, amalaka, and nim trees has not yet been spoiled by the hot, dusty winds of the Indian spring.
