Mughal Gardens and Famous Gardens of India: Notes

A Mughal garden is not simply a lawn with flowers in it. It is a plan, and that plan is the answer to most questions asked from this topic. The Mughals brought from Persia and Central Asia the idea of a walled garden divided into four parts, laid it over the hot plain of Agra and the hillsides of Kashmir, and built their tombs and palaces inside it. Examiners ask who made which garden, in which city it stands and what its layout is called, so the facts worth memorising are names, places and reigns.

The charbagh: the idea behind a Mughal garden

Charbagh means four gardens. A square or rectangle enclosed by a high wall is divided into four equal parts by two walkways or water channels that cross at the centre, and each quarter may be divided again. The form comes from the Timurid gardens of Samarkand and from the Persian description of paradise watered by four rivers, and it reached India with Babur. Water is the structure of such a garden: a straight channel called the nahr, sunken tanks, fountains fed by gravity, and a sloping carved stone called the chadar over which falling water ripples and sounds. On a slope the charbagh becomes a terraced garden, each terrace a step above the last. A pavilion open on all sides, the baradari, stands at the centre or at the head of the garden. When a tomb is placed at the crossing of the two channels, the building is called a garden tomb.

From Babur to Shah Jahan

Babur, who disliked the heat of Hindustan and said so in the Baburnama, laid out the Aram Bagh, also called Ram Bagh, at Agra in 1528; it is the oldest surviving Mughal garden in India. He also made the Lotus Garden, Bagh-e-Nilufar, at Dholpur. Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, begun in 1565 by his widow Bega Begum with the architect Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, is the first garden tomb of the subcontinent and a World Heritage Site. Akbar planted the chinars of Nasim Bagh beside the Dal Lake. Jahangir, the keenest gardener of the dynasty, built Shalimar Bagh at Srinagar in 1619 for Nur Jahan. Shah Jahan set the Taj Mahal at the end of its charbagh instead of the centre, kept the Mehtab Bagh across the Yamuna as its moonlit counterpart, and built the Shalimar gardens of Lahore and of Delhi. Fidai Khan, foster brother of Aurangzeb, laid out the terraced Pinjore garden in present-day Haryana, now called the Yadavindra Gardens.

The Mughal gardens of Kashmir

Kashmir keeps the largest surviving group of Mughal gardens, and a question from this topic is very often a Kashmir question. They share one design: terraces climbing a slope above the Dal Lake or around a spring, a central channel dropping from terrace to terrace, and rows of chinar trees. Shalimar Bagh, the largest, has terraces known as the Diwan-e-Aam, the Diwan-e-Khas and the zenana garden. Nishat Bagh, built by Asaf Khan about 1633, is the Garden of Gladness and is laid out in twelve terraces for the signs of the zodiac. Chashma Shahi, the smallest of the three, is built around a spring. Verinag encloses the source of the Jhelum, Achabal is associated with Nur Jahan, and Pari Mahal above Srinagar served as a school of astronomy and astrology in Dara Shikoh's time.

Famous gardens and botanical gardens of India

The words an examiner uses

• Charbagh: a garden divided into four parts by crossing walkways or water channels.
• Nahr: the straight water channel that runs down the axis of the garden.
• Chadar: a sloping carved stone chute over which water falls from one terrace to the next.
• Baradari: an open pavilion, usually with twelve openings, set in or above the garden.
• Garden tomb: a tomb standing inside a charbagh, as at Humayun's Tomb and the Taj Mahal.