The early Indian gardens were evolved very much on the lines that the climate and flowers of the plains would lead us to expect. Apart from the Pleasure Hill, their outstanding features were the flowering trees, the creepers, and the aquatic plants; the mango, asoka, and champaka groves, the bignonia, jasmine, and convolvulus bowers, and the lotus and water lilies floating on the ponds. Along the foot of the Himalayas, in Bengal, Burmah, Cambodia, and Java, gardens such as these flourished until, as we have seen, the coming of the Mughals changed the aspect of the Indian gardens. Once introduced, the new fashion took firm hold, for the Central Asian water-garden based on the system of irrigation was one specially suited to the arid plains of Upper India and the dry red rocks of the Raj-putana hills.
