Sanskrit literary texts abound in references to more worldly gardens: the great epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and courtly dramas such as Sakuntala and the Ratnavali. In Tulsidas's telling of the Ramayana, Rama and Sita first meet in a garden “so rich in bud and fruit and flower that in its abundance it put to shame even the trees of paradise." Commonly there is a dualism between the pastoral beauty of an Eden-like wilderness and the lushness of palace gardens. The forests where Rama, Sita, and Lakshman spend the years of exile are idyllic natural landscapes, with shady trees and flower-strewn riverbanks on which they weave garlands to their hearts’ delight. In contrast, Ayodhya, from whence Rama has been banished, and Lanka, to which Sita is abducted by the wicked king Ravana, are both described as garden cities. Here the natural is transformed into kingly gardens full of stately trees, orchards, and flowers, with lotus-bedecked ponds and man-made tanks.
The royal garden is above all a place of seduction where flowers speak the language of love. The Buddhacarita, a poem of the first century C.E., pictures the young prince before he forsakes the world entering a pleasure garden with its beautiful lotus ponds, flowered pavilions, and lovelorn women. One of the women entreats him to look about him at the trees, flowers, and birds, each of which signifies desire in some way. Buddha resists all enticements, but the story is typical of early medieval Indian courtly culture in exemplifying a View of “courtship as a combat which takes place in a garden." The Kamasutra prescribes the type of garden considered essential to the royal household of the Hindu prince. It should have densely shaded bowers, flowering plants, and a swing; above all it should be secluded, protected against prying eyes. Here men and women retire to indulge in amorous adventures. Courtly dramas pick up the theme of the pleasure garden, often with convoluted plots of misunderstanding, disguise, and eavesdropping until the lovers are at last united. Poets frequently describe courtcsies between people of rank by means of floral similes -thus the folded hands are like lotus buds, the gestures of the eyes like garlands, and words of praise like offerings of flowers. The human form, too, is similarly analogized: “Like the lotuses and flower buds . . . human limbs in their ideal state were to be smooth and tautly expanded, or blown like the tender and succulent growth of new plants.”
Just as Sanskrit texts link the plant world and the erotic, so, too, Persian influenced literary texts of Muslim India are “redolent of flowers." James Forbes quotes “A Song of Roshan, or Roxana,” which details the repertoire of sexually stimulating plants: “The sofa of my beloved is decked with garlands of mogrees, overshadowed by a canopy of jessamin. I have strewed it with the sweet dust of Keurah and perfumed it with ottar [attar] of roses; I am scented with the oils of lahore, and tinged with the blossoms of hinna; haste then, my beloved, to thine handmaid, gladden her heart by thy presence.” A deserted woman reproaches her lover: “The gardens and groves, once the fond retreat of thy Selima, afford me no pleasure; the mango and pomegranate tempt me in vain! The fragrance of champahs and odour of spices I no longer enjoy.” Sanskrit, Persian, and Deccani poetry as well extolled the sensuality of the garden and its appeal to all the senses: scent above all, but also sound, sight, and even touch.
Islamic gardens did, however, differ from their counterparts in Hindu India. Just how profoundly we do not know, since there are no precise descriptions of the gardens that preceded the series of Islamic invasions that began just decades after the Prophet’s death and culminated in the establishment of the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century. We know what was in these gardens and what took place there (if literary sources are to be believed), but not how they were laid out, nor how their design might have changed over time, independent of foreign influences. Babur, the first Mughal emperor and a passionate gardener, set the tone for future commentators with his dismissal of India as dreary and unpleasant, its gardens without order and without walls. The Muslim tradition, in contrast, is the heir to the Greek in its love of order and logic. “Islamic gardens—like their buildings—are regimented into lines of perfect symmetry; balance and design is all; nothing is left to impulse or chance.” They are as alien to the Indian environment, William Dalrymple insists, “as the Brighton Pavilion is to the English south coast, or the Chinese Pagoda to Kew [Gardens]. Outside the garden, all is delightful chaos; inside, reflecting the central concept of lslam, spontaneity is crushed by submission to a higher order.”
A garden created for such pleasures during one’s lifetime was often reconfigured after death, the mausoleum taking the place of the pavilion at its center. These gardens consciously invoked the Quranic imagery of Paradise, with its four intersecting rivers, as the aspiration for the departed. When Hindu rulers borrowed the concept of the memorial garden and its cenotaphs, as they did, for example, at Orchha and Mandore, it required some theological tweaking. Since Hindus cremated their dead there were no tombs, and since they believed in a cycle of reincarnation there was no promise of Paradise endoded in the garden. What remained was monumental architecture set off in a glade of flower and shade—mausoleums without bodies.
The zenana or purdah garden was a realm apart. It was probably the first garden to come inside the fort or palace; initially Mughal gardens in India had been freestanding entities, often ranged along a riverbank. Rajput and other Hindu rulers adopted the zemma and with it a garden exclusively for the women of the harem, their closest male relatives, and their numerous attendants——a gilded cage where women might pass their entire lives. Fanny Parks, traveling throughout northern India on her own in the 1830s and 1840s, probably knew the zenana and its secrets better than any other European. The four walls of the garden, she explains, must be of such a height that no man standing on an elephant can peer over” them. There were fine trees and flowers, a fountain with fish swimming in it, and a swing, “the invariable accompaniment of a zenana garden.” She adds, “The season in which the ladies more particularly delight to swing in the open air is during the rains”. Larger gardens, such as that of the palace of Lucknow, had tanks for bathing, and sometimes even a “montagne russe” to slide down or meadows for horseback riding.
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How Does Your Garden Grow?
Fortunately the Victorians were an instructive lot. Garden books, journals, and nurseries mushroomed in the nineteenth century to feed an ever-growing appetite for guidance. At times gardening took on attributes of a bloodsport, so fierce were the debates between partisans of different styles. The rage for bedding-out—starting tender plants in greenhouses and then setting them out in neat beds in patterns that resembled carpets——dominated the midcentury. This provoked a vehement reaction in the name of “naturalism,” spearheaded by William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll. They favored hardy perennials or semiannuals set out in herbaceous borders, along with rock and water gardens drawing on the many exotics that could adapt to the English climate without coddling. At the same time, some garden gurus promoted a return to the formalism of Italian gardens with their statuary, terraces, and topiary. Manuals devoted to gardening in India remained largely apart from these squabbles, only distantly reflecting the changing fashions. One, dating from 1872, approved the rather garish color schemes typical of carpet bedding, but of course in India the plants had no need to be started in hothouses. A later manual recommended William Robinson’s English Flower Garden “as a reward once one has mastered the abc's” of gardening, declaring, “it is the most instructive book in the world in English.” Agnes Harler, author of The Garden in the Plains (first published in 1901), had also clearly absorbed her Robinson and Jekyll, offering chapters on rockeries and water gardens. She suggested that a formal garden was best suited for very small compounds without room for wide lawns or spreading trees; however, she cautioned against herbaceous borders, noting that they are ill—suited to India's lower elevations, where only a few perennials do well and even these refuse to bloom all at the same time to produce the desired color effects.”
The most popular manuals on gardening in India went through many editions and covered the whole gamut of topics. They provided detailed chapters on soils, temperatures, manure, watering, drainage, tools, growing from seed, grafting, pruning, transplanting, potting, kitchen gardens (best kept out of sight), noxious insects, lawns, and conservatories, along with designs for flowerbeds adapted from England and the continent. They advised how to create a spacious feeling even in a modest compound (mass shrubs and strongly colored flowers farther from the house; keep the garden simple and uncrowded) and stressed the importance of making sure that the view from the spare bedroom wasn’t onto “decaying cabbage stalks or servants hanging out the wash”—plant a little lawn under the windows with a bed of cannas or a flowering shrub or two, or a screen of climbers “to hide backyard activities.” One of the most popular offered plans for larger or smaller spreads that were simply English plans adapted only slightly to Indian conditions.
~~Flora's Empire: British Gardens in India -by- Eugenia W. Herbert
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