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| 01/02/1991 |
| Review of SHALIMAR GARDENS, LAHORE |
Review of SHALIMAR GARDENS, LAHORE: Landscape, Form and Meaning, by Sajjad Kausar, Michael Brand and James L. Wescoat Jr. (1990).
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| If parks can be regarded as the lungs of a city, gardens serve as ventricles to its heart. A city without either would be as lifeless as a cold catacomb, a warren fit only for modern urban planners. |
| Fortunately for us today, the Mughals were not born in the official residence of a bureaucrat: they were not reared in gardens governed by inflexible tradition and tended by generations of official gardeners who passed their habits and the sinecure itself to their successors; and above all they did not need to seek approval from a higher authority before sanctioning a scheme of their choice. Had they had to do so, today we should not have had the likes of Shalimar Gardens to admire and enjoy. |
| This latest monograph on the Shalimar Gardens of Lahore, the only major mughal garden still extant in Pakistan, reminds those of us who have forgotten what aesthetes the early Mughals were, not by upbringing, not by education, but by instinct. Look closely at any of the first six Mughals – the conquering Babur, the sensitive Humayun, Akbar the great, Jahangir the connoisseur, and Shah Jehan the master-architect – and one soon realizes that they were more than a shining apex of a gilded and disorderly hierarchy of subservient vassals. They were both the symbol as well as its reality. From their glowing minds nimbate-like radiated an influence in every aspect of the society they governed, in the arts, literature, painting, architecture, music, religion, and in horticulture. |
| Only a portion of the cultural heritage created by the Mughals remains, but even in those scattered disjoined remnants – whether in the form of manuscripts, robes, jade cups, jewelry, carpets, mosques, palaces – one can recognize the emphasis on precision and good order. And to the Mughals, a sensitively-planned and flourishing garden was a microcosm of good order. |
| The Mughals recognized that a garden should appeal to more than one of the admirer’s senses, just as a well-operated Chinese meal should not simply stimulate the gourmet’s palate but also delight his eye and his sense of smell. In the scheme of a Mughal garden, the fragrance of flowers, the taste of succulent fruits, the sound of fountains playing or of water rippling over the carved marble chadar or cascade, the visual appeal of light from small lit lamps sparkling through a waterfall in a sawan-bhudan effect, and the tactile pleasure to be derived from living in comfortable well-ventilated pavilions which overlooked ordered lawns and terraces – all these combined to make the Mughal garden a complete sensual experience. |
| In a way, this monograph on the Shalimar Gardens provides its readers with a similar comprehensive appreciation of the purpose and the history of this royal retreat. Three scholars – Sajjad Kausar, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the National College of Art, Lahore, Dr. Michael Brand, Curator of Asian Art at the Australian National Gallery, and Dr. James Wescoat Jr., Assistant Geography at the University of Colorado, have contributed specialized essays on different aspects of the gardens. Dr. Brand in an essay on the context of Mughal gardens discuss their political, landscapes, design and meaning. Sajjad Kausar, who had written on the Shalimar Gardens as part of his University thesis, reviews the architectural features of the gardens and their landscaping. Dr. Wescoat’s study examines the geographical meaning and the geophysical aspects of the gardens. A fourth concluding chapter by Sajjad Kausar chronicles the history of Shalimar Gardens, reproducing some interesting observations made by visitors to the gardens over the centuries. |
| Just as no book should be read from the final page backwards (unless one is an inveterate proof-reader), so should Shalimar Gardens not be toured using the present entrance from the Grand Trunk Road side. One enters the gardens at its uppermost level, which is to miss completely the fundamental concept behind the original layout. |
| The plan of the gardens was in three sections – the lowest terrace which served as the public entrance, the higher middle terrace containing the water tank and fountains, and then the highest terrace which housed the royal apartments and private gardens. This was important because the ascending hierarchy of terraces symbolized the respective social levels within the court. Similarly, the flow of the water itself, coursing form beneath the royal chambers, down to the second and the third terraces, represented the flow of patronage from the king to his nobles and then his subjects. |
| The design of the gardens is severely geo-metrical and achingly symbolic – the number eight had a special significance for the Mughals and not surprisingly the octagon is the most frequently encountered design. When it was constructed in the record time 9even for the hard-pressed Mughal builders) of exactly one year, five months and four days in 1641-42, the gardens were known for their properties – Faiz Baksh and Farah Baksh for their function was to provide a haven of comfort to the king, to yield sot offerings of fruit and flowers for the delight of the monarch. Until Paradise, the Shalimar Gardens acted as an acceptable substitute. |
| Today, the Shalimar Gardens are justifiably a national monument and deserving of every respect, attention and support. The work of these three scholars in making us aware of our heritage is a timely reminder of our obligations to preserve it. Some years ago, a visitor to a garden lamented: “Those grounds were so bad and unattractive that we traversed them with a hundred disgusts and repulsions.” The complainant was the Emperor Babur commenting in 1526 on a garden he saw in his newly-conquered kingdom. Our successors may be tempted to make the same remonstrance. |
Printed in The FRONTIER POST, 1 February 1991. |
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| 01 February 1991 |
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