36 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



The Moghul 

 Style in 

 India 



brought with them from the East. Water, essential in any case for 

 the growth of the vegetation, was also by its life and movement and 

 sparkle, by its suggestion of coolness, by its very contrast with the out- 

 side world in a land of drought, the most precious and attractive thing 

 with which they could decorate the small areas in which perforce they 

 concentrated, to be enjoyed at ease, the kind of beauty and restfulness 

 furnished so scantily by the outside world. The water appeared in 

 brimming fountain basins, in long and narrow pools, in multitudes of 

 slender jets, and in little runnels cut in the pavements of the courts and 

 even of the buildings themselves. The fruit trees and flowers and 

 fountains were necessarily made a part of an architectural scheme, and 

 the style of the Moorish gardens is not separable nor essentially different 

 except in material from the style of Moorish architecture of the same 

 period. When the Moors were finally conquered by the more virile 

 but less beauty-loving races of the North, their taste left its stamp on 

 the culture of Spain, and the conquering Spaniard in Mexico and Cali- 

 fornia left in turn monuments of his taste and customs, still in a similar 

 climate, which serve as examples in these places to our civilization of the 

 present day. 



In the same way that the Arabs, having had previously no particular 

 garden art of their own, prized and appropriated the garden design of 

 the Persians and carried it to a new perfection in Spain, the Mongolian 

 invaders of Persia appropriated the same art and carried it later with 

 the founding of the Moghul dynasty in India to the greatest mag- 

 nificence which it has seen. Thus the gardens of the Alhambra and 

 those of the Taj Mahal (see Plate i) have a readily traceable common 

 ancestry. 



The design of the Moghul gardens was based, as the design of any 

 garden in a hot dry climate must be based, primarily on the value of 

 water and shade and flowers and fruit. The arrangement of these 

 was deeply influenced — both in the general division of the garden and 

 in such things as the grouping of the trees and the number of waterfalls 

 — by the Mohammedan symbolism which became gradually enriched 

 from the traditions of the symbol-loving Hindus.* The Moghuls were 



* Cf. the " marriage of the trees " and other symbolism alluded to in various chap- 

 ters in C. M. VilHers Stuart's Gardens of the Great Mughals, 1913. (See References.) 



