WATERCOURSES 101 



tanks and fountains. In Babar's time the outline 

 of the garden had not gone much beyond this. 



But the Turkestan Mughals were an intensely 

 practical as well as an artistic people as, indeed, 

 all historical nations are who have evolved sound 

 traditions for their guidance, and still retain the 

 capacity for adapting them afresh to the ever 

 changing conditions of time and place. India 

 is a hot country, unbearably so in summer, as 

 Babar's disheartened followers found when they 

 tried to force him to return to Kabul only four 

 days after the capture of Agra. But the Emperor 

 was not to be deterred ; and in their new gardens 

 by the Jumna the Mughals in time learned to 

 adapt themselves to their altered surroundings. 

 For one thing, they needed more water ; water to 

 cool the burning wind, big tanks to swim in as 

 well as long sheets of water to charm the eye 

 with their lovely tranquil reflections. Thus we 

 find the watercourses reduced in number and 

 gradually widening, so much so that one can 

 nearly always tell the approximate date of an 

 Indian garden by the width of its principal 

 watercourse. By the end of Akbar's reign they 

 had grown in width until the main watercourse 

 of the Shalimar Bagh, built by Jahangir in 



