The Mughals were of nomad origin, from Mongolia, but had previously conquered much of Central Asia, adopting, adapting and spreading the arts and cultures of the territories they administered. A high civilisation developed under Mughal rule in North India, including architecture and gardens, drawing upon the range of sources sketched below.
"Mughal Empire" was also the self-designation of the Timurids in Central Asia and Khorasan. At the time of the empire's greatest territorial extent the Mughals ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, then known as Hindustan, and parts of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. By 1700, the empire had reached its zenith with a territory spanning 4 million km² and over 750 million acres.
Some of the influences on Mughal Gardens may derive from the Hindu and Buddhist civilizations of India. Others reached India with the conquerors, who followed earlier Islamic invaders (Arab, Seljuk, Persian, Afgan etc). A Turkic language was spoken in Mongolia and the people were skilled horsemen. Their empire functioned as a bridge between West and East enabling the exchange of ideas and technology between Europe and China. The Mongol conquest of Persia led to their adoption of Persian culture, including its religion, art, architecture, script and language. The gardens of the Islamic world drew upon Persian and Christian sources, which themselves drew from the ancient civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The situation is further complicated by the fact that hardly anything survives of the old garden culture in this vast region. Though written without the innumerable qualifications proper to the circumstances, what follows is a hypothesis which attempts to set Mughal gardens in a broad West Asian context.
On the history of gardens and landscapes in the Indian subcontinent
This essay considers some principles that lie behind the construction of gardens and landscapes in pre-Islamic India. It sketches the principles lying behind gardens and landscapes to the west of India in the lands of Islam and Christianity. Finally it considers the synthesis and continuity of these two traditions into the gardens and landscapes that developed during the period of Islamic and later European domination of India.
Both Islamic and European concepts of gardens may be considered together here, and would then be referred to as 'Western' concepts; that is, originating west of India, and with common themes when compared with the native Indian concepts.
Early India
The basis for the construction of a temple is a mandala, (specifically a vaastu purusha mandala). Given the geometric and symmetric layout of mandalas, one would expect the layout of a temple and its compound to follow an equally geometric layout, and this is generally so.
The mandala and the temple are representations of the world or the cosmos. A classic view of the world has Mount Meru at its center, with the mountain standing in the island of Jambudvipa, itself set within an ocean. Temples usually contain representations of these three primary elements, at least in part. Meru or Mount Kailasha is represented by the temple shikara itself, Jambudvipa by the temple and its base or the compound, and the ocean by a tank. The basic plan of a temple is a square or rectangle, though this can sometimes be reduced to a linear axis. Where a temple is found within an enclosed space, this is in most cases a rectangular space aligned with the temple. In many cases a water feature is found, often as a tank within the temple compound. The alignment of the temple with the compass directions emphasises its basis in the world. While the symbolism is not always clear, the rectangular layout of the land around a temple is still the rule. There is always water present in some form, for washing and for symbolic purposes.
Among the best examples of these elements in the Indian subcontinent are the Surya temple at Modhera, the Minaksi temple at Madurai, and the Harimandir at Amritsar. The symbolism is probably at its most elaborate at Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
Temples or temple complexes may contain representations of other landscape elements, although it is not clear that these were always present in pre-Islamic times. Representations of forests occur in the 'thousand pillared halls'. Representations of rivers occur regularly, either on the temple itself, in the shape of goddesses, makaras, etc., or as carvings of rivers on the temple or on its surrounds. Presumably for religious reasons, these representations are more common in Hindu temples than in Buddhist.
Other important buildings, including palaces, would probably have designed landscapes and gardens associated with them. However there are few early palaces left, or even the traces of these. The outline of the formal gardens of a palace, from about AD400 can be seen however at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. This is has a strong rectangular layout, based on the axis of the palace. The remains of other palaces can be seen in their foundations, such as in the stone bases to the palace pillars in the royal center of Vijayanagara. There are references to town, house and palace gardens in the early literature, but this needs further study to try and determine the details of the layouts.
There are many references to forests, forest glades, and flower filled clearings in the passages about life in the forests in the Puranas and the epics. Typically these mention flowering creepers, shading trees, singing birds, fragrant flowers, and ponds, often associated with an ashrama or other simple dwelling. They are common in the accounts of the exiles of the principal characters of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and in the accounts of the lives of rishis. These descriptions occur in such number and detail that it is apparent that an informal garden based on a forest clearing, and probably by a river or stream, was seen as an ideal. Of course any such garden or dwelling would have vanished into the forest almost as soon as the gardener gave up, so these accounts will probably have to remain the main evidence. Subsidiary evidence can be seen in the detail of some paintings.
In some cases, such as the descriptions of early Pataliputra under the Magadhas, accounts of informal gardens are given in relation to cities, or in the immediate neighbourhood of cities.
It appears from the above, that there were two different traditions of garden and landscape design in pre-Islamic India, which could be called the formal and the informal traditions. The formal is based on the geometric surrounds of a civic building, aligned with the compass directions, and is based on the mandala and cosmic order. The informal is that based on the forest clearing and is based on the simple life of a forest dweller living as part of nature.
Islamic and western traditions
Most of the gardens of the various Islamized cultures are traditionally lumped together under the title 'Islamic gardens'. The common square pattern of the garden or the compound of a tomb probably developed from a fusion of the walled garden, thought to have originated in the Persian paradiaza, with the Semitic concept of the Garden of Eden. The paradiaza is a walled enclosure that shuts out the outside world and encloses a garden. The Garden of Eden is a mythic place from which four rivers flowed out in the four cardinal directions. The fusion of these developed into the 'chahar bagh' (the Persian term, which I will continue using here), the quartered garden. The first known walled tomb garden in India is Sikander Lodi's tomb in Delhi, predating the Mughal tomb gardens.
In the main, the chahar bagh as seen in India is a square or rectangular enclosure, quartered by water channels that are said to represent the four rivers flowing out of Eden (as described in Genesis). Examples of these include the principal Mughal tombs - Sikandra, Taj Mahal, and Humayun's tomb. These show a layout that could be called the Indian layout of the chahar bagh; the garden is enclosed within walls, is square or nearly so, and has a central reference point, usually the tomb.
Water is present by mosques for the same reason as by temples; the worshipper is required to be clean before worship.
Other formal garden layouts exist. A common one is the linear garden (Shalamar bagh, Kashmir and some of the gardens in the Alhambra, Spain). These may blend into the squared layout, as in the chahar bagh of Esfahan. The garden may be part of the surrounding landscape or town. The garden could be divided into numerous squares as in the Aram bagh (Rambagh), Agra.
In Europe, one line of garden tradition is derived directly from the Islamic interpretations of the Garden of Eden. Later on there were attempts to find ideas in Roman and Greek thoughts, and later still in Chinese and Japanese traditions.
A synthesis
It can therefore be seen that there are distinct parallels and similarities in several key areas between the native Indian concepts and the western concepts. The main points of the similarities are;
- A square or rectangular enclosure, often a walled compound
- The presence of a dominant focal feature, a temple tower, tomb, pond or palace
- A quartering or other division of the near landscape, often along the cardinal directions
- The use of water as both an ornamental and as an essential ablutionary feature
I suggest that the above shows that the original Muslim concepts and the native Indian concepts had enough similarities that they could be synthesised relatively easily to produce a Indian pattern which could be recognised as belonging in either tradition. The Garden of Eden theme was united with the mandala based themes of the Indian landscape. Examples of the resulting gardens include that of the principal Mughal tombs. The result was interpreted as a variant of the Garden of Eden theme because the dominant culture when these gardens were created was a western culture.
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