10 ON SOME EARLY GARDEN HISTORY 



to this restriction, and painted men and animals 

 freely ; but flowers, fruit, and foliage remained 

 the chief motives on the tiles and carpets for 

 which they are so famous, lending to their work 

 a greater beauty and interest than appears in 

 that of their stricter Sunni brethren of Bagdad, 

 Cairo, and Damascus, with whom geometrical 

 designs were most in favour. 



Old as these first Mohammedan gardens were, 

 Zoroastrian skill in garden-craft takes the story 

 back still further. To this day the gardens of 

 the Parsees in India and the Gabres in Persia 

 are notable for their wealth of flowers and the 

 skill with which the plants are grown — and may 

 we not trace in thought these gardens back 

 through the great platforms and terraces of Per- 

 sepolis, to the hanging gardens of Babylon itself ? 

 In the East ideas and forms change slowly when 

 they change at all. This much is certain, that 

 in all this country of Central Asia the first 

 condition must always have been the life-giving 

 water. 



The spirit of the garden-paradises of Europe 

 hides in the flowers, the grass, the trees, but the 

 soul of an Eastern garden lies in none of these : 

 it is centred in the running water which alone 



