India and the Near East

s most gardens and landscapes are usually associated with major buildings, the study of them is intricately bound up with the history of architecture. Most of the buildings surviving from pre-Islamic times are temples because till a fairly late period temples were generally the only buildings built of stone. The remains of some palaces exist, particularly their stone foundations. 

The basis for the construction of a temple is a mandala, (specifically a vaastu purusha mandala). Given the geometric and symmetric layout of mandalas, one would expect the layout of a temple and its compound to follow an equally geometric layout, and this is generally so.

The mandala and the temple are representations of the world or the cosmos. A classic view of the world has Mount Meru at its center, with the mountain standing in the island of Jambudvipa, itself set within an ocean. Temples usually contain representations of these three primary elements, at least in part. Meru or Mount Kailasha is represented by the temple shikara itself, Jambudvipa by the temple and its base or the compound, and the ocean by a tank. The basic plan of a temple is a square or rectangle, though this can sometimes be reduced to a linear axis. Where a temple is found within an enclosed space, this is in most cases a rectangular space aligned with the temple. In many cases a water feature is found, often as a tank within the temple compound. The alignment of the temple with the compass directions emphasizes its basis in the world. While the symbolism is not always clear, the rectangular layout of the land around a temple is still the rule. There is always water present in some form, for washing and for symbolic purposes.

Among the best examples of these elements in the Indian subcontinent are the Surya temple at Modhera, the Minaksi temple at Madurai, and the Harimandir at Amritsar. The symbolism is probably at its most elaborate at Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Temples or temple complexes may contain representations of other landscape elements, although it is not clear that these were always present in pre-Islamic times. Representations of forests occur in the “thousand pillared halls.” Representations of rivers occur regularly, either on the temple itself, in the shape of goddesses, makaras, etc., or as carvings of rivers on the temple or on its surrounds. Presumably for religious reasons, these representations are more common in Hindu temples than in Buddhist.

Other important buildings, including palaces, would probably have designed landscapes and gardens associated with them. However there are few early palaces left, or even the traces of these. The outline of the formal gardens of a palace, from about 400 AD can be seen at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. This is has a strong rectangular layout, based on the axis of the palace. The remains of other palaces can be seen in their foundations, such as in the stone bases to the palace pillars in the royal center of Vijayanagara. There are references to town, house and palace gardens in the early literature, but this needs further study to determine the details of the layouts.

There are many references to forests, forest glades, and flower filled clearings in the passages about life in the forests in the Puranas and the epics. Typically these mention flowering creepers, shading trees, singing birds, fragrant flowers, and ponds, often associated with an ashrama or other simple dwelling. They are common in the accounts of the exiles of the principal characters of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and in the accounts of the lives of rishis. These descriptions occur in such numbers and details that it is apparent that an informal garden based on a forest clearing, and probably by a river or stream, was seen as an ideal. Of course any such garden or dwelling would have vanished into the forest almost as soon as the gardener gave up, so these accounts will probably have to remain the main evidence. Subsidiary evidence can be seen in the detail of some paintings.

In some cases, such as the descriptions of early Pataliputra under the Magadhas, accounts of informal gardens are given in relation to cities, or in the immediate neighborhood of cities.

It appears from the above, that there were two different traditions of garden and landscape design in pre-Islamic India, which could be called the formal and the informal traditions. The formal is based on the geometric surrounds of a civic building, aligned with the compass directions, and is based on the mandala and cosmic order. The informal is that based on the forest clearing and is based on the simple life of a forest dweller living as part of nature.

Islamic and western traditions
Garden culture of the Moslem East was highly developed. One could see a yard, often squared by a small chattering irrigation canal, with trees, grapevines and songs of birds in cages hanging from a branch, even in the most plain home. Gardens also stretched between the open buildings in the palaces of Middle Asia, Iran, Iraq and India. 

Most of the gardens of the various Islamized cultures are traditionally lumped together under the title 'Islamic gardens'. These were situated primarily in the subtropical zone and fused with the open rooms of the palaces in a very peculiar way. The common square pattern of the garden or the compound of a tomb probably developed from a fusion of the walled garden, thought to have originated in the Persian paradiaza, with the Semitic concept of the Garden of Eden. The paradiaza is a walled enclosure that shuts out the outside world and encloses a garden. The Garden of Eden is a mythic place from which four rivers flowed out in the four cardinal directions. The fusion of these developed into the “chahar bagh,” the quartered garden. The first known walled tomb garden in India is Sikander Lodi's tomb in Delhi, predating the Mughal tomb gardens.

In the main, the chahar bagh as seen in India is a square or rectangular enclosure, quartered by water channels that are said to represent the four rivers flowing out of Eden (as described in Genesis). Examples of these include the principal Mughal tombs - Sikandra, Taj Mahal, and Humayun's tomb. These show a layout that could be called the Indian layout of the chahar bagh; the garden is enclosed within walls, is square or nearly so, and has a central reference point, usually the tomb.

Water is present by mosques for the same reason as by temples; the worshipper is required to be clean before worship. What is more, Moslem gardens appeared in regions where people had always respected water because their food and life depended on it to the greatest extent. Water meant also comfort and coolness in the scorching lands of the Arabian East, Iran, Iraq and India. So, people treated water as a most precious thing when directing it through the marble beds of the pools and canals in the colorful gardens. 
In Europe, one line of garden tradition is derived directly from the Islamic interpretations of the Garden of Eden. Later on there were attempts to find ideas in Roman and Greek thoughts, and later still in Chinese and Japanese traditions.

A synthesis
It can therefore be seen that there are distinct parallels and similarities in several key areas between the native Indian concepts and the western concepts. The main points of the similarities are;

• a square or rectangular enclosure, often a walled compound 
• the presence of a dominant focal feature, a temple tower, tomb, pond or palace 
• a quartering or other division of the near landscape, often along the cardinal directions 
• the use of water as both an ornamental and as an essential ablutionary feature 

The above shows that the original Muslim concepts and the native Indian concepts had enough similarities that they could be synthesized relatively easily to produce a Indian pattern which could be recognized as belonging in either tradition. The Garden of Eden theme was united with the mandala based themes of the Indian landscape. Examples of the resulting gardens include that of the principal Mughal tombs. The result was interpreted as a variant of the Garden of Eden theme because the dominant culture when these gardens were created was a western culture.

Non-Western Styles 1766 - 1045 BC: Shang Dynasty, China 1045 - 256 BC: Zhou Dynasty, China 800 BC - 600 AD: Olmec, Mexico 100 - 200 AD: Zapotec, Mexico  2nd - 3rd c. AD: Gandhara, India 320 - 647 Gupta, India 300 - 1500 Mayan, Mexico 618 - 907 Tang, China 645 - 791 Nara, Japan 960 - 1279 Song, China 1185 - 1333 Kamakura, Japan 1350 - 1520 Aztec, Mexico 1100 - 1532 Inca, Peru 1368 - 1644 Ming, China 1392 - 1573 Muromachi, Japan 1550 - 1680 Benin, Africa 1615 - 1868 Edo, Japan 1644 - 1912 Qing, China .

All finite things reveal infinitude: 
The mountain 

with its singular bright shade 

Like the blue shine

on freshly frozen snow, 

The after-light upon 

ice-burdened pines; 

Odor of basswood 

upon a mountain slope, 

A scene beloved of bees; 
Silence of water 

above a sunken tree: 

The pure serene 

of memory of one man,- 

A ripple 

widening from a single stone 

Winding around the waters of the world. 

Theodore Roethke

Earth Is Enough

We men of Earth have here the stuff
Of Paradise - we have enough!
We need no other stones to build
The Temple of the Unfulfilled - 
No other ivory for the doors -
No other marble for the floors - 
No other cedar for the beam
And dome of man's immortal dream.

Here on the paths of every-day - 
Here on the common human way
Is all the stuff the gods would take
To build a Heaven, to mold and make
New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime
To build Eternity in time!

Edwin Markham