This first sketch of the Mughal '
Paradise Garden' will, I fear, make but a limited appeal to English readers, as a recollection of one of my earliest Indian experiences vividly but vainly reminds me. On a long railway journey northward, the tedium of which had been pleasantly beguiled by a fellow-passenger's wide knowledge of the history of the country through which we were passing, the train, after thundering over a broad sandy river-bed, rushed past some buildings buried in a wood; leaving a blurred, but entrancing vision of red enclosing walls, high tiled gateways, and slender marble minarets, rising through the densely clustering palms and forest trees of a great garden. 'What is that?' I exclaimed with delight, pressing my face to the darkened sun-proof window-pane. But here my kindly informant altogether failed me. 'I really don't know,' he said; 'nothing much,-just one of those old Mughal baghs.'
Among the many books dealing with various branches of Indian Art, it is remarkable that none have so far been devoted to the subject of Indian gardening; although, in its traditional, artistic, and symbolic aspects, the Mughal Paradise Garden supplied the leading motive in Mughal decorative art, and still underlies the whole artistic world of the Indian craftsman and builder.
This attempt to break fresh ground, this venture into the hitherto unexplored field of the Indian Garden, naturally presents great difficulties; not the least being the short time allowed me for the preparation of this volume, owing to my desire to illustrate the bearing of Indian garden-craft on the pressing problem of New Delhi, as well as on the larger subject of the Indian handicrafts. I hope, therefore, that alike my Indian and my English readers will be as lenient with me as they can.
Eastern gardens and their buildings are so closely and significantly interwoven, that the subject of architecture generally, and incidentally that of New Delhi, cannot be avoided. Here in place of any words of my own, I trust I may be forgiven for repeating two well-known quotations - the first from Fergusson's introduction to his book, Indian Architecture: 'Architecture in India is still a living art, practiced on the principles which caused its wonderful development in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and there, consequently, and there alone, the student of architecture has a chance of seeing the real principle of the art in action.' And the shrewd Bernier's delightful dictum: 'The citadel contains the Seraglio and other royal edifices; but you are not to imagine that they are such buildings as the
Louvre or the
Escorial. The edifices in the Fort have nothing European in their structure; nor ought they, as I have already observed, to resemble the architecture of France or Spain. It is sufficient if they have that magnificence which is suited to the climate.'
Surely no 'magnificence' could be more charmingly 'suited to the climate' than that of an Indian garden-palace. Those who, while sympathetically inclined towards Indian art and its aims, have yet confined themselves to the beaten track in India, and would seem, therefore, to doubt the existence and genius of the Indian master-builder, will be interested in the Government Report on Modern Indian Architecture published last April. Apart from the conclusions drawn by Mr. Gordon Saunderson and Mr. J. Begg, F.R.I.B.A., Consulting Architect to the Public Works Department of the Government of India, and their recommendation of the direct employment of Indian master-builders on the score of cheapness, the photographs of the Mosque, with its purdah galleries, now under construction for Her Highness the Begam of Bhopal, and the modern merchants' houses at Bikanir and elsewhere, show that there is life and power in the native craftsmanship of India to meet and profit by any new demands we may desire to make upon it. Direct, generous, and discriminating patronage is the chief need of modern Indian art.
For the 'plentiful lack' of flowers in my sketches of the old baghs. Indian garden-craft must not be held responsible. The absence of colour is mainly due to the influence of our English landscape gardeners, and their fixed belief in the universal virtue of mown grass. Happily in some Indian gardens there are still the sparkling fountains.
In the transliteration of Oriental names and words, I have, as far as possible, followed the system now in use in India. It will be familiar to English readers from Murray's Hand-book, India, Burmah, and Ceylon.
My grateful acknowledgments are due to Her Highness the Maji Sahiba of Bharatpur for her help in the matter of Hindu garden symbolism, and for the photographs of her
Palace of Deeg; also to Her Highness Princess Bamba Duleep Singh for many details of Mughal and Sikh garden ritual and customs. I am greatly indebted to Sir George Birdwood, K.C.I.E., for his invaluable advice, and to his well-known article on The Christmas Tree; and to Mr. E. B. Havell for the kind loan of three articles of his on Indian gardening which appeared in The House and Garden Magazine.
To Mr. J. H. Marshall, C.I.E., Director-General of Archaeology in India; Mr. Gordon Sanderson, Superintendent of Mohammedan and British Monuments, Northern Circle; Professor F. W. Thomas, Ph.D., Librarian of the India Office; Mr. A. G. Ellis, Assistant Librarian; and Colonel T. H. Hendley, C.I.E., I am indebted for their ready help in my search for references; and to Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy for his kind assistance in obtaining photographs of Mughal miniatures.
My thanks are also due to the Durbars of Kashmir and Patiala, and to Nihal Singh, Sirdar of Pinjor.
C.M. Villiers Stuart
Beachamwell Hall, Norfolk, September 1918.
