Garden and Landscape Practices in Pre-colonial India

Histories from the Deccan

Daud Ali, Emma J. Flatt

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000365672
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book presents a set of new and innovative essays on landscape and garden culture in precolonial India, with a special focus on the Deccan. Most research to date has concentrated on the comparatively well preserved gardens and built landscapes of the celebrated Mughal empire, giving the impression that they have been lacking in other times and regions. Not only does this volume provide a corrective to such assumptions, it also moves away from traditional art-historical approaches by posing new questions and exploring hitherto neglected source materials.

The contributors understand gardens in two related ways: first as real or imagined spaces and manipulated landscapes that are often invested with pronounced semiotic density; and second as congeries of institutions and practices with far-reaching social ramifications for the constitution of elite societies. The essays here present a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of garden culture in precolonial India, and together suggest several new and exciting directions of enquiry for those working in the Deccan, Mughal India, and beyond.

1
The Use of Garden Imagery in Early Indian Buddhism

AKIRA SHIMADA

Now at that time the twin Sāla trees were all one mass of bloom with flowers out of season; and all over the body of the Tathāgata these dropped and sprinkled and scattered themselves, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old. (Mahāparinibbānasutta, 5.2)

As a result of growing urbanisation and the rise of sedentary societies, early historic India (c. 500 BC–AD 300) saw significant social change. One of the most remarkable changes was the emergence of two new social classes, the urban elites (nāgaraka) and social renouncers (śramaṇa). Of them, the more successful group of śramaṇas was certainly the Buddhist saṁgha, which gained a foothold in the lower Gangetic valley and soon expanded into other parts of the Indian subcontinent (particularly after the Maurya period, c. 300–200 BC). Through its expansion, Buddhism significantly shaped certain aspects of urban society, and in turn adopted a variety of ideas and practices from the nāgaraka.

This article will explore the integration of Buddhism into early urban India through its use and adaptation of garden imagery. Royal gardens and rich, urban household gardens were cultural institutions of some significance in the period, and Buddhist order seems to have developed a close relationship with garden culture.¹ As a result, there is a rich garden imagery in early Buddhist literature and architecture (c. 200 BC–AD 300).

¹ Daud Ali, ‘Gardens in Early Indian Court Life’, Studies in History, vol. 19, no. 2, 2003, pp. 221–52; Gregory Schopen, ‘The Buddhist “Monastery” and the Indian Garden: Aesthetics, Assimilation, and the Siting of Monastic Establishments’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 126, no. 4, 2006, pp. 487–505.

Early Buddhist texts often use flower and plant imagery to glorify the Buddha’s miraculous acts. Early Buddhist architecture, particularly stūpas, were also full of motifs linked with gardens — lotuses, vine-scrolls, trees, fruits and courtly figures playing in gardens. How did early Buddhist literature and architecture adopt garden imagery and accommodate it within a Buddhist framework? What are the historical implications behind this phenomenon? This article addresses these questions by examining the Buddhist use of garden imagery in textual and artistic traditions. In the first section, I will give an overview of the nature of the garden in early historical India and its geographical, social and ideological links with Buddhism; then, I will examine the use of garden imagery in representative Buddhist scriptures compiled in the early centuries AD, such as the Buddhacarita and early Mahāyāna sūtras. In the third and fourth sections, I will examine the use of garden motifs in early Buddhist stūpas (c. 200 BC–AD 300) to highlight their distinctive features, particularly in the treatment of erotic figures. The geographical focus of this section will be central India and the Deccan as they were core areas of growing urbanisation in India between 200 BC and AD 300. They also preserve the richest Buddhist remains of this period.

Gardens and Early Buddhism

Judging from the sources, there were probably a number of ‘types’ of gardens in early India — residential gardens attached to palaces, mansions, or wealthy households, orchards on royal lands, and what may have been ‘public’ gardens maintained by the king. The most commonly mentioned among these is the residential garden — although in many texts the precise type of garden described is less than clear. Daud Ali has argued that palatial and mansion gardens (ārāma) in ancient India were beautiful, highly ordered and carefully ornamented places continuous with the ordered domestic space of the palace.² But unlike the royal residential quarters and assembly hall which formed the official arenas of courtly life, the garden functioned as a place of more private and intimate enjoyments. Various courtly activities such as the Spring Festival and the related worship of Kāmadeva, picnics with companions and secret meetings with lovers and courtesans took place there.³ According to the Kāmasūtra, lovers (nāyaka, nāyikā) were to play various games in the gardens using plants and flowers, including the opening of mangoes, eating roasted grains and lotus stems, playing with new leaves and so on. They were also to enjoy various activities connected with erotic pleasures, including drinking wine, dancing, spraying water and various games of courtship.⁴ Such garden activities are confirmed in Buddhist literature. In the Buddhacarita by Aśvaghoṣa (c. 2nd century AD), for example, there is an episode depicting the Bodhisattva’s walk in the pleasure garden accompanied by courtesans who were asked to seduce him. The scene is described as follows:

Then surrounded by the women, the prince wandered through the garden, like an elephant through the Himalayan forest, accompanied by a herd of females. In that lovely grove he shone with the women in attendance on him, like Vivasvat surrounded by Apsaras-es in the pleasance of Vidhrāja. Then some of the young women there, pretending to be under the influence of intoxication, touched him with their firm, rounded, close-set, charming breasts. One made a false stumble and clasped him by force by her tender arm-creepers, which hung down loosely from her dropping shoulders. Another, whose mouth with copper-coloured lower lip smelt of spirituous liquor, whispered in his ear, ‘Listen to a secret’.⁵

⁵ Buddhacarita, 3.27–31.

Such prescriptive and poetical representations suggest that the garden in ancient India was not merely a place for cultivating plants, but had unique and indispensable functions in urban and courtly society, distinctively different from those of the royal palace. While the royal palace was a kind of ‘public’ space where a series of fixed manners and customs had to be observed, gardens were ‘private’, intimate and ‘fluid’ places where expected social customs, such as the continence of sexual desire, were likely to be violated.⁶ The royal assembly and the pleasure garden thus formed complementary topoi in the urban courtly culture.

² Ali, ‘Gardens in Early Indian Court Life’, pp. 223, 225–34, 237–38.

³ Ibid., pp. 235–36.

⁴ Kāmasūtra, 1.4.24–29. See also the discussion of garden games in the Mānasollāsa in Daud Ali’s article in this volume.

⁶ Ali, ‘Gardens in Early Indian Court Life’, p. 237

Why, then, did Buddhism make such use of the garden and its imagery — which appears ostensibly at odds with monastic life? There are two possible reasons. The first was the geographical and social ‘separated proximity’ of the garden to the urban space. As indicated by both textual and non-textual evidence, gardens and Buddhist monasteries both tended to be located at the ‘periphery’ of or ‘interstices’ between more densely settled areas. In the Buddhacarita, the Buddha goes to a pleasure grove not directly from the palace but by passing through the city to a spatially separate garden, perhaps for nobles. This seems to indicate that the grove was not attached to the palace and was located in a remote part of the city.⁷ Schopen’s study of the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya suggests that gardens and monasteries were located very close to each other and had similar environmental conditions.⁸ My archaeological survey of the Andhra region in the eastern Deccan also indicates that early historic cities of this region had Buddhist monasteries in fringe areas around the fortifications.⁹ An apparent reason for their geographical and environmental ‘separated proximity’ was that both gardens and monasteries required quiet, sheltered surroundings, but also easy access from or to the city centre — in this sense they were urban rather than rustic phenomena. It may also be noted that both gardens and monasteries were places for extraordinary activities, such as the Spring Festival, lover’s meetings and ascetic life, in which everyday social customs and ethics were transcended.¹⁰ Although their functions and aims were quite different and even seemingly incompatible, they were nevertheless related institutions in urban spaces in terms of their ‘sepa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Plates and Tables
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Use of Garden Imagery in Early Indian Buddhism
• 2. Botanical Technology and Garden Culture in Someśvara’s Mānasollāsa
• 3. Nature, Dams, Wells, and Gardens: The Route of Water in and around Bidar
• 4. Paradise on Earth: The Deccan Sultanates
• 5. In Amīn Khān’s Garden: Charitable Gardens in Qutb Shāhi Andhra
• 6. The Use of Imaginary Landscapes in Paintings from Bijapur
• 7. Reading Gardens in Deccani Court Poetry: A Reappraisal of Nusratī’s Gulshan-i ‘Ishq
• 8. The Nizamshahi Persianate Garden in Zuhūrī’s
• 9. Heavenly Gardens: Astrology and Magic in the Garden Culture of the Medieval Deccan
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Index