Indian Gardens 
trees down the cen¬ 
tre, as shown in the 
illustration. I be¬ 
lieve this arrange¬ 
ment to be wrong, 
on artistic and ar¬ 
chaeological grounds 
which I will pres¬ 
ently discuss. 
Let us first investi¬ 
gate the earliest his¬ 
torical accounts of 
the Taj gardens. 
Bernier, the French 
physician, who saw 
them about 1660, 
gives the following 
description, viewing 
the gardens from the 
raised platform of 
the Mausoleum: 
“ To the right and 
left of that dome 
(the Mausoleum) on 
a lower surface, you 
observe several gar¬ 
den walks covered 
with trees and many 
parterres full of flowers. . . . Between the 
end of the principal walk and this dome 
is an open and pretty large space, which I 
call a water parterre, because the stones on 
which you walk, cut and figured in various 
forms, represent the borders of box in our 
parterres. ” 
Ibis is only intelligible on the supposition 
that the two lines of geometric figures already 
described were not flower beds but were 
filled with water, like the channel which 
divides them. 1 cannot help thinking, how¬ 
ever, that the honest Bernier, writing at 
Delhi, had in these details mixed up the Taj 
gardens with the other great gardens which 
Shah Jahan constructed there. An earlier 
historian, a native author of Shah jahan’s 
time, Muhammad Salat Kumbo, in the 
Shah Jahan Namah seems to contradict 
Bernier on this point. He says: “In the 
four beds situated in the centre of the orchard 
(1. e., the beds in the four arms of the Greek 
cross), each of which is 40 dirra broad, 
there is a water course 6 guz broad in which 
jets d'eau besprinkling light are by the waters 
182 
of Jumna playing 
and sprinkling 
pearls.” The dis¬ 
tinction here made 
between the beds 
and the water course 
does not agree with 
Bernier’s suggestion 
that the whole ar¬ 
rangement was filled 
with water. 
Jahangir in his 
memoirs has given 
several indications 
as to the planting 
of Mogul gardens 
before the Taj was 
built. He tells us 
that one of Babar’s 
gardens at Agra had 
a long avenue of 
areca-nut palms 
about ninety feet 
high. The gardens 
of Akbar’s tomb at 
Sikandra were plant¬ 
ed with “cypress, 
wild-pine, plane and 
supdnry trees (areca-nut palm).” Another 
garden constructed under Jahangir’s direc¬ 
tions at Sehrind, is described thus: “On enter¬ 
ing the garden I found myself immediately in a 
covered avenue planted on each side with scar¬ 
let roses, and beyond them arose groves of 
cypress, fir, plane and evergreens variously 
disposed . . . Passing through these we 
entered what was in reality the garden, which 
now exhibited a variegated parterre orna¬ 
mented with flowers of the utmost brilliancy 
of colors and of the choicest kinds.” This 
is very suggestive of the geometric flower beds 
of the Taj gardens. In yet another garden 
at Ahmedabad he particularises “orange, 
lemon, peach, pomegranate and apple-trees, 
and among flowering shrubs every kind of 
> > 
rose. 
It is necessary to bear in mind that very 
little, if any, of the present plantation of 
the Taj gardens is more than a century old. 
During the latter half of the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury, when the Mogul Empire was falling to 
pieces, Agra was occupied for years by the 
jats and Mahrattas, both Hindus in religion. 
CONTRAST OF FRUIT-TREE AND CYPRESS 
From an Oriental Carpet Design 
