114 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BOOK REVIEWS. 



" Gardens of the Great Mughals." By C. M. Villiers Stuart. 

 8vo., xviii + 290 pp., with 40 full-page illustrations. (A. & C. 

 Black, London, 1913.) 12s. 6d. net. 



Readers of gardening literature will heartily welcome this book, 

 which breaks entirely fresh ground, dealing as it does with the romantic 

 gardens constructed by the great Mughal rulers of India, which now for 

 the most part are left uncared for or exist only in ruins. These Mughal 

 gardens v/ere made during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 and were copied from the earlier gardens of Turkestan and Persia. 

 They were invariably rectangular in plan, divided up into smaller 

 squares or parterres, the whole enclosed within a high wall, with usually 

 four lofty and imposing entrance gateways. Throughout the whole 

 length of the garden ran a water-canal (irrigation being essential) 

 edged with stone or brick, and in the larger gardens additional side- 

 canals were formed. The canals usually flowed into large fountain- 

 studded tanks, and in the largest of the sheets of water thus formed 

 was usually placed the principal pavilion, which was thereby rendered 

 a cool retreat from the heat of the burning noontide sun. Round the 

 outer garden-walls avenues of trees were planted, while the square plots 

 intersected by the watercourses were filled with fruit trees or elabo- 

 rate parterres of flowers. The design of these gardens was closely 

 interwoven with the history of the country, and the Hfe, traditions, 

 and rehgious ideals of the people by whom they were planned, 

 and each tree and flower had originally its symbolic meaning and 

 method of arrangement. The volume describes a number of such 

 gardens, or the remains of such as exist at the present day, and the 

 descriptions are enhanced by photographic reproductions of delightful 

 Mughal miniature paintings illustrative of Indian gardens. Inci- 

 dentally the author recalls the fact that the Mughal gardens of the 

 sixteenth century resembled in many ways the gardens of Tudor Eng- 

 land, which " now, alas ! have nearly all vanished, their last vestiges 

 swept away by the sham romanticism of the eighteenth century and 

 the zeal of those who followed the traditions of the once-lauded 

 gardener ' Capability ' Brown." It was the introduction into India 

 of the English landscape garden of the eighteenth century, coupled 

 with the change in the habits and manners of the Indian people, 

 particularly as regards the methods of travel, that the author considers 

 has led to the neglect of Indian garden-craft at the present day and 

 the divorce of horticulture and garden design. It was the old Mughal 

 garden that supplied the leading motive in Mughal decorative art 

 and still underlies the whole artistic world of the Indian craftsman and 



