The designs of the old Firdus (Paradise) carpets were, as their name implies, directly taken from some such garden parterre as those which still exist in outline in the Anguri Bagh; where each of the four squares which make up the whole design has its separate border and central plot, once, like the carpets, full of brightly-coloured flowers woven into a close geometrical pattern. The Mughal parterres must not be confused with the English 'carpet bedding' of mid-Victorian days-tiny coloured leaves and flowers worked into a tedious pattern along some border or bank-but were boldly massed flowers of varying heights and beautifully chosen colours, like the lily beds of the Taj dados, the red rose garden of Jahangir's Memoirs, the narcissus, anemone, and tulip plots that so delighted Babar. The surrounding border was treated differently, in oblong beds of alternate colouring, or else with single flowers like the groups of hollyhock and tuberoses. The customary mixed avenues of trees were only for larger gardens, but in palace squares, like that of Anguri Bagh, a cypress tree planted in the border nearly always marked the angles of the design, while the centre of each plot was sometimes occupied by a fruit tree or a palm.
The replanting of the Anguri Bagh might prove difficult chiefly on account of the need for providing an adequate water-supply so high up in the fort. But would it not be worth doing if it helped to revive the dying art of Indian gardening ? Are the wonderful surroundings of this square, so full of beauty and historic interest, not worth completing by the restoration of the garden ? As a living example of Mughal art at its best, it would mean more, educationally and artistically, than all the priceless Mughal treasures locked away, isolated, in many fine but lifeless museums. What would the present archaeolo- gists and artists of France and Italy not give to have this perfect setting of the Anguri Bagh for their labours ? Now, when so much is done to revive old conditions, when the columns of the Roman forum and the ruins of Pompelian villas are restored so carefully and artistically, that even the shrubs and trees that grew beside them in past times have been replanted, as in the garden of the Vestal Virgins, or the Villa of the Vettii.
The Anguri Bagh in the Agra fort is the one garden in the three great Mughal palaces left complete with its old stone and marble details; and yet there it lies, bare and empty, with only grass between its masonry, like some great, elaborate, jewelled design rifled of its coloured gems, turning its gaping empty setting to the sun.
