GARDEN STAIRWAYS 223 



flight protected by a low rail of plastered brick- 

 work. Here, for the first time in a Mughal 

 garden, I was vaguely reminded of the vast 

 stairways of Italian garden architecture — those 

 superb flights of steps and balustrades that lend 

 so much character and beauty to the gardens 

 made by the Cardinals and Princes of the seven- 

 teenth century. Pinjor, too — ^the last, so far 

 as I know, of the great Mughal gardens — was 

 built in this same century. Perhaps even here 

 the coming European influence was faintly felt ; 

 or it may have been only an accidental treatment, 

 caused by the site and natural drop in the 

 ground. 



It is remarkable that so little ornamental use 

 is made of steps in Indian gardens in general. 

 The Mughal garden stairways are nearly all 

 re-entrant and wind up through the thickness 

 of the terrace walls — a wise plan obviously for 

 hot countries ; but even in the open the steps are 

 steep and clumsy, their only ornament being the 

 favourite leaf pattern cut on the upper edge of 

 each rise, and in more modern work even this 

 decoration is absent. 



The lower garden was large, about two 

 hundred and eighty yards wide by three hundred 



