CHAPTER III 



THE MANGO 



Plates V-V1 



AKBAR, the Mughal emperor who reigned in northern India 

 from 1556 to 1605, planted near Darbhanga the Lakh Bagh, an 

 orchard of a hundred thousand mango trees. Nothing, perhaps, 

 more eloquently attests the importance of this fruit and the 

 esteem in which it has long been held than this immense 

 planting, made at a time when large orchards of fruit-trees 

 were almost unknown. Three hundred years after they were 

 set out, the English horticulturist Charles Maries found some of 

 these trees still in vigorous condition. 



Few other fruits have the historic background of the mango, 

 and few others are so inextricably connected with the folk-lore 

 and religious ceremonies of a great people. Buddha himself 

 was presented with a mango grove, that he might find repose 

 beneath its grateful shade. The Turkoman poet Amir Khusrau, 

 whose grass-covered tomb is still venerated at Delhi, wrote 

 to this effect in Persian verse during the reign of Muhammad 

 Tughlak Shah (1325-1351) : 



The mango is the pride of the Garden, 

 The choicest fruit of Hindustan. 

 Other fruits we are content to eat when ripe, 

 But the mango is good in all stages of growth. 



In more recent times, British authors have not hesitated 

 to lavish praise on this oriental King of Fruits. Fryer, in 1673, 

 wrote regarding mangos that "The Apples of the Hesperides are 



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