House and Garden 
who had no respect for the Mogul master¬ 
pieces and looted whatever they could lay 
hands on. It is more than probable that in 
these troublous times the gardens were often 
used as a convenient camping ground for 
Jat and Mahratta troops. Even if they did 
not wantonly destroy the gardens, it is 
unlikely that they took any trouble to pre¬ 
serve them. We may safely assume that 
when the British captured Agra, in 1803, a 
great deal, if not all, of the original plantation 
had perished. 
In attempting to reconstruct the gardens, 
according to the original idea, it is first 
necessary to consider the strictly religious 
purpose of the Taj and the symbolism and 
mysticism of Oriental art. Next, we must 
remember that the great artists who designed 
the whole magnificent architectural scheme 
would never have neglected the proper 
relation of the garden to the building. The 
whole art of the Taj being so largely derived 
from Persia, we may be sure that in the 
planting of the trees the Mogul gardeners 
symbolised the mystery of life, death and 
eternity in the manner in which it is always 
represented in Persian art, i. e., the fruit- 
tree or flowering shrub contrasted with the 
evergreen, flowerless cypress. The illustra¬ 
tion on page 187, from an old Indian painting, 
shows the cypress alternated with a flowering 
shrub. This is the usual arrangement. The 
cypress was often planted at the corners of 
flower beds. Sometimes a pair of cypresses 
is alternated with the emblem of life, as in 
the illustration taken from an old Oriental 
carpet. 
In an old, sixteenth-century, Indian paint¬ 
ing the intervals between the cypresses are 
occupied alternately with a flowering shrub 
and an areca-nut palm. We may take it 
that the cypress trees in the Taj gardens 
were planted in one of these ways. 
While the Taj has been in British posses¬ 
sion an avenue of cypresses has always been 
planted down the main approach to the 
Mausoleum. Since 1803 it has been re¬ 
planted at least twice, for in times of great 
drought the trees perish for want of irriga¬ 
tion. Each time a different line has been 
taken. I think it will be interesting and 
instructive from a gardening point of view 
to endeavor to determine which of these 
lines are the right ones. The plan on page 
184 shows a portion of the main avenue with 
details of the water channel, the geometric 
beds and the three lines of cypresses as they 
have been successively planted. The lines 
AA' represent the trees as they were in 1828, 
according to Colonel Hodgson’s plan in 
which the cypresses were very carefully 
indicated. The correctness of the plan in 
this particular is attested by an old native 
painting of about the same date in a book 
now preserved in the Victoria Memorial 
Collection, Calcutta. The cypresses were 
EFFECTS OF PLANTING ON OUTER AND INNER LINES 
