The influence of climate on eastern gardens
These fragrant Gardens of the Bulbul [Asian song-thrush, or a singer or a poet] and the Rose, and all the poetic imagery they inspired, are well known to us, but the passionate national love of flowers, of which these writings were the outcome, is not so widely understood. Japan is now always thought of as the country where flowers and gardens play the largest part in the national life and art, while the parallel case of Persia is almost forgotten. This is not surprising when one reflects that in Japan garden-culture flourishes as a living art whose results are apparent to every traveller, while in Persia years of warfare and misgovernment have left the old gardens neglected and almost inaccessible.
Intense appreciation of flowers seems to have been very general all over Central Asia, and may be traced to the two great influences which underlie all national arts-climate and religion.
Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is spring more wonderful than in the high tableland of Persia and the mountainous countries lying east and west of it. Nowhere, certainly, are there such contrasts of climate: summer's heat and winter's cold alternately strip the country bare of colour, but spring pays for all: a brief spring, -only a few weeks,-into which is crowded all the flowering season of the year with a wealth of bloom hardly to be realised in more equable climates such as England and Japan, where the gardens flower on gaily for many months in succession.
In Persia as the snows melt, their whiteness is rivalled by the delicate sprays of early fruit blossoms as seen across the dark background of the cypress trees; while the pink mist of almond and apricot flowers shows in little patches of colour against the bare hillsides. Soon the ground under the trees is carpeted with bulbs, scillas; tulips, crown-imperials, narcissus, hyacinth, fritillaries, and iris. Take up a box of old Kashmiri lacquer-work and see how the flowers and colours crowd together. Lilac, jasmine, and carnations follow; then, last and best of all, come the roses, giant bushes covered with huge, pink, fragrant flowers, such masses as are seen in Europe only in the pictures of some fairy tale. White roses too, and red and yellow; but the pink roses were always, the artist's favourites. For a few weeks longer the gardens and hillsides are at their brightest; then the petals fall, as summer comes and burns the land into one unending dusty monotone.
Summer flowers ! There are no such things outside the carefully tended gardens.
This concentration of growth and beauty into a brief period deeply affected the imagination of the people, and all their arts reflect the national love of flowers. No wonder, then, that all the Persian poets join with old Omar in his lament, 'Alas, that Spring should vanish with the rose!'
The other great influence, that of religion, is explained by the restrictions of the Koran, which forbade the delineation of human beings or animals, so that the artists of the faithful were confined to floral or geometrical designs. The Shiah sect of Aryan Persia never held very closely to this restriction, and painted men and animals freely; but flowers, fruit, and foliage remained the chief motives on the tiles and carpets for which they are so famous, lending to their work a greater beauty and interest than appears in that of their stricter Sunni brethren of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus, with whom geometrical designs were most in favour. Old as these first Mohammedan gardens were, Zoroastrian skill in garden-craft takes the story back still further. To this day the gardens of the Parsees in India and the Gabres in Persia are notable for their wealth of flowers and the skill with which the plants are grown-and may we not trace in thought these gardens back through the great platforms and terraces of Persepolis, to the hanging gardens of Babylon itself ? In the East ideas and forms change slowly when they change at all. This much is certain, that in all this country of Central Asia the first condition must always have been the life-giving water.
