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D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

AT THE MARGINS OF ARCHITECTURAL AND LANDSCAPE HISTORY: THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA

Mughal architecture and gardens are much loved and petition among patrons. But scholars who focus on the well studied by historians of South Asia, and the Taj Ma- Islamic world rarely look beyond the Taj and the hal’s shimmering pool, axial vistas, and majestic domed Fort to see what sites like Amber, Bundi, and mausoleum appear in nearly every textbook surveying Orchha can tell us about and par- the history of art. In contrast, little scholarly attention ticularly landscape. If they did, they would see that the has been bestowed on contemporaneous sites, premise of the as an expression of Mus- built by the Hindu princes of a warrior caste who ruled lim religious beliefs falls apart when it is applied to before and during the (1526–1857).1 Rajput gardens, which often use the same quadripartite This is not due to any aesthetic shortcomings or lack of form to express entirely different meanings. My point Rajput architectural complexes in for historians here is not to castigate historians of Islamic architec- and architects to study: there are beautiful and well-pre- ture, who, admittedly, cover vast world areas, spanning served palaces with gardens at Amber, , Orchha, from western China to the Maghreb, and from Central Bundi, and Nagaur, among others. The various Rajput Asia to Mali. Rather, I wish to show that, because of the kingdoms were largely located in Rajasthan, although asymmetrical way various areas of art have been they eventually spread to Malwa and , defined—according to religion, ethnicity, geography, and to the Punjab Hills and what is today dynasty, and language—we often lack a useful frame- (fig. 1). Their palaces are visually stunning and every bit work (or even a concern) for areas of significant cultural as sophisticated as their Mughal counterparts in their overlap and complexity like mudéjar Spain, Coptic cultural symbolism, political expression, architectural Egypt, and Hindu South Asia. I will focus primarily on ornament, hydraulic engineering, and artistic innova- palace garden architecture, although buildings and tion. Rajput palace architecture belongs to a broadly painting must also be considered. defined South Asian visual culture in which many forms One exception to the general blindness to Rajput were shared by both Mughal and Rajput patrons, al- architecture is the palace at Amber Fort (fig. 2). The though historians of Islamic architecture have generally Amber Fort was built by Raja Man Singh (r. 1590–1615), treated this as an example of cultural influence, in which a Rajput ruler of the Kachhwaha clan and one of the distinct entities swapped artistic elements and style, highest-ranking officials in the Mughal court, on a rather than the highly complex interweaving that it was. mountain in the Aravalli range (about 14 kilometers The purpose of the following exploration of Rajput from the site where, in 1727, would be founded).2 palace gardens is not to promote an imagined binary Rectangular in plan, it was built in successive stages and that separates Mughal from Rajput forms of art. Most was significantly extended during the reign of Mirza scholars of South Asian art move flexibly between Hindu Raja Jai Singh I (r. 1623–67/8), who built an outer recep- and Muslim art forms and recognize the futility of try- tion courtyard as well as a handsome inner courtyard ing to distinguish one from the other, especially given to serve as his own quarters. This inner court closely the mobility of artists and artistic motifs and the com- matches Mughal models, with a central garden divided 96 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 1. Map of the Indian subcontinent, showing the boundaries of the Rajput kingdoms (seventeenth century). (Map: C. Scott Walker, Harvard Map Collection, Harvard College Library)

Fig. 2. Amber Fort, plan of Raja’s court, 1623–68. (Plan: D. Fairchild Ruggles and Binaifer Variava) THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 97 into quadrants and subdivided by a stellar geometry into smaller sunken beds crisscrossed by narrow raised walkways (fig. 3). The garden court is flanked on either side by the elaborately ornamented pavilions of Sukh Nivas (to the west) and Jai Mandir (to the east), which open towards it through columnar arcades and raised terraces. Following the typology of the classic Mughal waterfront garden complexes at Agra and (the Delhi Fort had not yet been constructed), the palace had an elevated position on a hilltop overlooking an artificial lake.3 In Mughal fashion, water was promi- nently and dynamically displayed: from the Sukh Nivas and Jai Mandir pavilions, water cascaded over a chādar (chute) and a panel of chīnī khāna (tiered niches) to flow through white marble channels towards the cen- Fig. 3. Amber Fort, Raja’s court. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) tral pool, which took the shape of an eight-pointed star. On the edge of the manmade Maota Lake below, the Maunbari Bagh, also known as the Kesar Kyari, similarly (fig. 4). The precise date of this garden is unknown, but adhered to the geometrical formalism of the cross-axial it was built before 1711, when it appears on a cloth map four-part garden, commonly called a chahār bāgh. The of Amber, and probably after the Mughals’ surge of garden is laid out symmetrically, with dominant central ­garden building in Kashmir, which ended in the mid- axes connecting the stepped levels of the ground plane seven­teenth century.4 The downward cascade of the

Fig. 4. Amber, Maunbari Bagh, seventeenth century. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) 98 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 5. , Srinagar, 1625. (Photo: D. Fairchild Fig. 6. Orchha, Rai Praveen Mahal, probably 1672–75. (Photo: ­Ruggles) D. Fairchild Ruggles)

Maunbari Bagh’s terraces and the dramatic panoramic Rai Praveen, but it is not absolutely clear whether it was views of the surrounding landscape owe a clear debt to built by that patron or earlier, by Bir Singh Deo (r. 1605– the Mughal garden estates of Kashmir to the north. 27), who had built the Jahangiri Mahal. In his recent There, the Nishat Bagh (1625) and Shalamar Bagh (1619– study of Orchha, Edward Rothfarb speculates that the 20), both built on the shores of Lake Dal in Srinagar, pavilion and garden may have replaced an earlier gar- mediated in tiered levels between the high snow- den, and indeed such rebuilding—especially of gar- capped mountains and the silvery lake, their central dens—was not uncommon.7 The Rai Praveen Mahal water channels forming powerful axes that stretched overlooks the large Anand Mahal Bagh, a garden divided the chahār bāgh from a centralizing plan into a linear into two halves, each enclosed by high walls (figs. 7 and series with pronounced directionality (fig. 5).5 On the 8).8 The dominant axial path that runs from the main north bank of Amber’s lake, a second garden, the early pavilion to a diminutive one set against the north wall eighteenth-century Dilaram Bagh, likewise followed a suggests bilateral symmetry, but in fact neither the quadripartite plan with four pavilions.6 In all three of enclosures nor the organization of walkways and plants the Amber Fort gardens, the legacy of the Islamic chahār within them is symmetrical. Instead of division into bāgh is evident, a distinctly Mughal contribution to halves or quadrants, the garden follows a gridded sys- South Asian garden forms. tem in which the planting is confined to relatively small, Elsewhere, Rajput patrons departed from Mughal sunken octagonal cavities (approximately 1.5 meters in modes. At Orchha, the capital of the Rajput state of Bun- diameter) in a packed-mortar horizontal surface (fig. 9). delkhand from 1531 to 1783, the principal palace garden The cavities today hold tall slender Ashoka trees and followed neither the classic model of the chahār bāgh more broadly canopied Orange Jasmine (murraya nor the stepped linear model of Kashmir. Orchha’s Jah- paniculata), giving the effect of an orchard. The present angiri Mahal, begun in 1605 and finished circa 1619 by trees have only recently been planted,9 but in the sev- Bir Singh Dev, occupies the highest point of an island enteenth century the area was also probably arranged formed by the natural bend of the Betwa River and an as an orchard garden, although more likely with small artificially enhanced moat, in both size and altitude fruit trees. Rather crudely built conduits running across eclipsing the older Raj Mahal built by his father. At the the mortar surface supply the garden with water. foot of these two palaces stands the Rai Praveen Mahal, This preference for planting in pits excavated in a an airy two-storied garden pavilion with rooftop terrace hard surface is not unique to Orchha; it is also seen at (fig. 6). The pavilion and its garden served as the resi- Ahhichatragarh Fort at Nagaur (Rajasthan) and the City dence of the consort of Indramani (r. 1672–75), named Palace of Udaipur. The garden in the City Palace’s Amar THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 99

Fig. 7. Orchha, Anand Mahal Bagh, probably 1672–75. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles)

Vilas courtyard (1698–1710) is laid out neither as a strictly cross-axial chahār bāgh nor as a linear Kashmiri type with stepped esplanades. Instead, the courtyard is divided into a grid with a square pool in its center (fig. 10). Surrounding this, each square of the grid is fur- ther divided into nine small, individual pockets exca- vated from an otherwise hard surface. These are filled with flowering plants and shady trees.10 At the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Rajput Ahhichatragarh Fort at Nagaur, a palace with elegant halls and gardens stands within an enclosure of high, fortified walls.11 The palace is divided between the wom- en’s quarters (zenāna) on the western side (a rabbit’s warren of small residential units arrayed around an Fig. 8. Orchha, plan of Anand Mahal Bagh. (Plan: courtesy oblong courtyard, simplified as generic blocks on the of the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of axionometric view) and the more open and expansive Illinois) public halls to the east (fig. 11). Moving from the ­western 100 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 9. Orchha, Anand Mahal Bagh, planting detail. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles)

Fig. 10. Udaipur, City Palace, Amar Vilas courtyard, 1698–1710. (Photo: courtesy of Jennifer Joffee) THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 101

Fig. 11. Nagaur, Ahhichatragarh Fort, axionometric view. (Plan: courtesy of Minakshi Jain)

to the eastern areas of this more public part of the com- also stores water in small rooftop tanks and, when nec- plex, there is a courtyard with garden; overlooking it are essary, lifts it up from a cistern in the garden below via the elevated upper-story windows of the Rani Mahal, a bucket and chain mechanism. When the rooftop tanks with the Sheesh Mahal (a type of bāradarī, meaning a hold sufficient quantities, the water can be slowly rectangular pavilion with arched or trabeated openings released to flow down the surface of a nearly vertical on its sides) standing in the center. The courtyard gar- chādar in the hall’s interior below (fig. 14). The water den between the Sheesh Mahal and the smaller, airy from this inspired ornamental display flows from the bāradarī that it faces to the south takes the form of a Abha Mahal out into the open area of gardens or classic chahār bāgh, with a central water basin and a orchards that fills the eastern portion of the palace chādar (now missing) on its east wall (fig. 12). enclosure. In the desert environment of Nagaur, where Further to the east is a larger esplanade, with the slightly less than 4 centimeters of rain falls annually, Main Baradari at the north end, overlooking an enor- and where there are no lakes, rivers, or streams nearby, mous rectangular pool with two elegant smaller kiosks water is not wasted and its presence is admired. arrayed along its southern perimeter (fig. 13). These look The garden that fills the large oblong courtyard down upon a quadripartite garden at a slightly lower between the Main Baradari and the Jal Mahal tank mer- level. Beyond this is a paved terrace with a square its closer attention because it is highly unusual. Instead bāradarī in the center, overlooking the large Jal Mahal of deep beds of earth filled with vegetation, as in a typ- tank. In the northeastern corner of this area is the Abha ical Mughal garden, the quadrants that are divided by Mahal ensemble. This hall has an ingenious system of the four water channels form a shallow depression of rooftop water catchment that captures water from large hard-packed mortar. In the surface of each are pits rainfall events on its terraced roof and broad eaves and approximately deep enough for the root ball of a shrub directs it into the large pool in the courtyard below. It (fig. 15). Water conduits run between these pits below 102 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 12. Nagaur Fort, Sheesh Mahal’s chahār bāgh, seventeenth century. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles)

Fig. 13. Nagaur Fort, main courtyard: a large rectangular pool is in the lower left-hand corner, the lotus garden is beyond the small bangla-roofed kiosk, and the square bāradarī is in the upper right. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 103

trees that rose above the ground plane, but more likely it was a type of low vegetation that spilled beyond the edges of the cavity. If this had been a water-thirsty spe- cies that could not tolerate drought, the container method and its sub-surface piping would have pre- served moisture and facilitated irrigation; but if, as some scholars believe, the pits were filled with water and planted with lotuses or water lilies, the slightly sunken quadrants may have been designed to fill with water after the rains, flooding to a level slightly higher than the pits and covering the flat mortar surface with a thin silvery film. It would have been a seasonal event—but gardens are always characterized by such ephemeral Fig. 14. Nagaur Fort, Abha Mahal, chādar. (Photo: D. Fairch- moments of exceptional beauty. The “lotus pools” had ild Ruggles) an intermediary position between the Main Baradari’s enormous pool and the large Jal Mahal tank, and the the surface of the mortar paving, forming an intercon- effect of viewing all three bodies of water at once must nected system for irrigation in which evaporation would have been spectacular. In the dry season, only the pits have been minimized. Such underground channeliza- themselves would have held water. With either the tion would have been advantageous in arid Nagaur. The abundance or scarcity of water, and whether potted pits could have been planted with shrubs or small fruit with low shrubs or afloat with lotuses, the vegetation

Fig. 15. Nagaur Fort, detail showing the Lotus garden. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) 104 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 16. Nagaur Fort, Sheesh Mahal, water tank. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) would have spilled beyond the confines of the cavities, incorporated into the women’s quarters. If so, the pool forming islands of colorful blooms and green foliage. may have been a later addition, providing the women The display could have been enjoyed from any of the with a private place to swim, as seen in Rajput minia- surrounding pavilions, but it would have been espe- ture paintings and murals in which women are shown cially impressive in the two diminutive kiosks, which bathing and cavorting in such pools. The typological may have given the illusion that they were poised source for this kind of enclosed courtyard with tank between two seas of water.12 appears to lie within Indic domestic tradition because A second form at Nagaur that eludes the Mughal there is evidence for such galleried tanks in the fifteenth typology is that of the courtyard with the large tank and sixteenth centuries at the city of Vijayanagara enclosed by walls and fronted by pavilions, (Hampi) (in the south), as, for example, in the so-called as exemplified by the Jal Mahal tank and the smaller Queen’s Bath. Although the Deccan plateau in the pen- tank in the Sheesh Mahal ensemble. The Sheesh Mahal insular south was far from the northeastern desert tank is enclosed by an arcade that extends from the where Nagaur was located, there seems to have been an pavilion itself, and the pool serves in place of an inte- awareness, and even exchanges, between the courts of rior courtyard (fig. 16). The interpretation of this court- northern and southern India.13 Therefore, when analyz- yard is complicated by the historic sequence of ing artistic exchanges, it is not only the relationship architectural change and augmentation in the Fort. The between the Mughals and Rajputs that must be consid- Sheesh Mahal has interior wall paintings that closely ered, but also relations among the Rajput kingdoms, as match a similar mural program in the Hadi Rani Mahal, well as between the Rajputs and other Hindu kingdoms. which lies on the same north-south axis and belonged These gardens and courtyards provoke typological to the women’s quarters of the palace. This correspon- questions that force us to reexamine the prevalence of dence suggests that the Sheesh Mahal was at some point the Mughal aesthetic and to ask whether there were, in THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 105 fact, not only multiple Mughal types but also a reper- The Mughal imperial histories, while not necessarily toire of alternative types that developed within a Rajput more numerous, were for the most part available in (as well as broader South Asian) context. However, to translation throughout the twentieth century, due to do this we must first acknowledge the existence of an the keen interest of British historians in the great empire architectural category—the “Rajput Garden” (in which they had colonized, which they could not help but see are included courtyards and tanks)—that exists in terms of their own imperial ambitions, as well as to together with its Mughal counterpart, and second, we the nature of the texts themselves. As Allison Busch has must recognize that, as tools for political and cultural explained, the Mughals preferred a kind of historical expression, the built works of the Rajputs followed dif- writing that was recognizable to Europeans as a chron- ferent strategies and may have had different goals. icle, whereas the Rajputs wrote about history differ- Considerable scholarly study has been given to the ently, through poems and writings that revealed history, motivations, and meanings of the palaces and historical values rather than a straightforward sequence gardens of the Mughals.14 This is in remarkable contrast of events.18 In consequence of these biases, there were to the situation with the built works of their contempo- far more translations of Mughal dynastic histories than raries, even though Rajput palaces and gardens attract Rajput histories, and the Mughals became more widely tourism and are strikingly photogenic. There are many known at both the scholarly and popular level. The possible explanations for this omission from histories greatest Mughal histories were the Baburnāma (the of culture and art. One is that the textual sources are memoirs of Emperor Babur [r. 1526–30], first translated invariably more numerous for imperial rulers than for in 1826), Akbarnāma (the history of Emperor and regional dynasts, and while many of the Rajput rulers his reign [1556–1605], translated beginning in 1868), and were powerful and proved to be formidable foes in Jahangirnāma (the history of Emperor and his resisting Mughal conquest, none of them ever attained reign [1605–27], translated beginning in 1909).19 But the territorial breadth that the Mughals had won by the while the translations may have made Mughal history end of Akbar’s reign in 1605. Nonetheless, there exist available to a wide audience, the fact that such works dynastic histories and historical poems written for were translated and published is a reflection—not a Rajput rulers that, while not chronicles in the Mughal cause—of an already deep fascination with the Mughals sense, are historically revealing.15 Furthermore, there on the part of British historians and empire-builders. are architectural inscriptions and archival records of The scarcity and lack of translated sources on the individual Rajput houses that document household Rajputs do not entirely explain the imbalance in the expenditures, temple donations, and social protocol, scholarship. Because there were a great many Rajput and provide an economic description of the province.16 dynastic houses that coexisted with the Mughals, serv- Such texts could have been read by British officials, ing variously as allies or foes, there are many more many of whom were linguistically well trained, but if Rajput forts and palaces than Mughal ones. Here the the texts were read or translated, they were rarely pub- imbalance would seem to favor the Rajputs, suggesting lished and thus did not reach a wide audience. There that there ought to be a great many more publications were accounts written by English historians as well: on Rajput palaces and their gardens than on Mughal James Tod’s lengthy Annals (1829–32) provided a residential architecture of the same period. But this is detailed, entertaining, and factually reliable history not the case. While in recent years scholarly and hand- (although colored by biased interpretation) of the somely illustrated publications have appeared focusing Hindu rulers of Rajasthan.17 These works ought to have on regional capitals, the classic survey works on Rajput generated interest in the Rajputs, but in actuality their palaces continue to be those of Oscar Reuther (1925), impact was limited. This may have been due to contem- Giles Tillotson (1987), and George Michell (1994).20 His- porary circumstances: whereas the Rajputs were polit- torians of South Asian landscape are grateful to have ically active and thus still able to control their own serious studies of Rajput palace architecture, but while histories, the formerly powerful Mughals had been architectural publications often include plans that indi- defeated. cate the presence of courtyard gardens as an element 106 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES of the built form, they rarely extend beyond the formal the second of the two volumes on Islamic art covers to address the iconography, specific plantings, water South Asia from the Sultanate through the Mughal peri- systems, and climatic conditions that are key aspects of ods, the authors are sensitive to the eclectic nature of garden design. Moreover, the field of Rajput architec- Islamic art in South Asia, but the specific examples of tural study is still small enough that palatine sites such Indic ornament and Hindu temples to which compari- as the Nagaur Fort are generally unknown. In general, sons would logically be drawn are relegated by the Pel- while Mughal palaces receive serious scholarly analy- ican’s overarching serial structure to a separate volume sis, Rajput palaces are dismissed as merely scenic.21 on Indian art.26 A similar division occurred in Stokstad’s There are reasons for this. In the nineteenth and early Art History (to which I contributed), where Islamic and twentieth century, Mughal forts were empty and could South Asian art comprised separate chapters.27 Worse, be coopted by the British for both use (as occurred in although David Talbot Rice’s Islamic Art (published in Delhi) and study; Rajput palaces, on the other hand, 1965, and revised in 1975) and Robert Hillenbrand’s were inhabited by their princely families (and many still Islamic Art and Architecture (1999) purported to be com- are). Even when the Rajput owners chose to live else- prehensive, they ignored South Asian Islam entirely.28 where, outsiders were not typically allowed into their In history writing, the Mughals suffer sometimes by empty palaces. Thus, the architecture was more likely being excluded from the rest of the Islamic world and to be viewed in that superficial scenic sense, rather than at other times by being included in Islam but separated understood as a result of serious methodical study. Until from other South Asian artistic traditions. Independence in 1947, the art and architectural history Within art history, the most cogent explanation for of South Asia was written mostly by British rather than why most historians have paid little or no attention to Indian scholars, and the former often looked at form Rajput gardens and palace architecture is that while the without inquiring further, emphasizing classification Mughals occupy a niche in the broad history of Islamic and ignoring (or not having access to) the texts that architecture, and Hindu temple architecture and city could have provided the social context for the material planning occupy their own niche in South Asian stud- culture and explain the original meaning of the archi- ies, the Rajputs straddle the two. Their religious affilia- tecture. The outstanding exception to this was Ananda tion and worldview were Hindu,29 and yet they adopted Coomaraswamy (d. 1947), who served as curator of many of the outward signs associated with the Mughals. Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1916 Although Hindus constituted a demographic majority until his death.22 within the Mughal Empire, historians outside of India Even the architecture of the Mughals, one of the have typically treated them as a subcategory in a time three great Muslim empires, is sometimes relegated to and place generally categorized as Islamic.30 the margins of Islamic architectural history.23 Because A similar observation can be made with respect to the emphasis has historically been placed on the cen- manuscript painting, where Rajput paintings have gen- tral Islamic lands, the Sultanate and Mughal eras in erally received less attention from art historians than South Asia have been treated as Ghaznavid and Timu- Mughal paintings, largely because they were regarded rid spin-offs, whose architecture can only be explained as a deviation from a centralized courtly tradition, through reference to more central, mainstream prece- according to a model that defined artistic relationships dents.24 Ernst Kühnel began the short Mughal chapter as those inevitably between an influencer, who is seen in his 1962 survey by acknowledging this tendency to as actively creative, and the one so influenced, who pas- explain Mughal art solely in terms of derivation from sively receives artistic forms and ideas from a position Persian precedents. Kühnel allowed for the originality of inferiority.31 It is true that court painters who served of the Mughal artists but seemed to take it for granted Rajput patrons employed many of the same craft tech- that “an unadulterated Indian-Muhammadan style” niques, media, and themes as their contemporaries could be differentiated from the “pure Hindu stream.”25 working for Mughal patrons, and many of them appear In the more recent Pelican History of Art series, where to have been trained by artists working for the Mughal THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 107 court. Although there is evidence of much earlier Hindu Regarding the patronage of the Mughal emperor Jahan- painting at, for example, the Ajanta caves (culminating gir, Milo Beach notes, “Jahangir’s great Album contains in the second half of the fifth century) and in sacred Mughal, Deccani, Persian, and European works (both manuscripts donated to temples, Rajput painting prints and paintings by European artists), and Jahangir changed with the introduction of a new style by Mus- was famous for his cosmopolitan interests. But nowhere lims in the Sultanate period. And it was again pro- does he even acknowledge any tradition of painting in foundly altered in 1554, when Emperor Humayun (r. Rajasthan, despite the fact that a Rajput noble such as 1530–40, 1555–56) brought Persian artists to India from Raja Man Singh (who held the highest rank in the the court of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–76). Mughal administration) was decorating his spaces in However, as is so often the case in South Asian visual Rajput style back home in Amber.”35 The rejection was culture, the flow of influence was not unidirectional: if surely because of the prevalence of Hindu religious artists working for Rajput courts acquired some of their themes among Rajput court workshops, but it may also practices and motifs from their counterparts in the have been because of the different ways that Hindu art- Mughal court (who in turn were affected by imported ists chose to represent narrative. Instead of a realistic Persian ideas and expertise), it is also true that the early pic­ture of plausible events, as in Mughal painting, Hindu Mughal artists received ideas and motifs from their painters invited their viewers into a visual world repre- Hindu contemporaries. Local plants and dark-skinned sented in multiple moments in time, in multiple places, figures started to appear in Mughal scenes; fields of and even in two worlds (the human and the divine).36 color were sometimes rendered without the Persian Rajput and Mughal painting traditions responded to taste for intense pattern; the figure seen in profile each other over the course of three hundred years (and became more prevalent.32 Emperor Akbar even com- Hindu princes competed not only with Mughals but also missioned an illustrated manuscript copy of the great among themselves). It was not only the artists who were Sanskrit epic the Rāmāyana (Rama’s Journey, 1587– adept at moving among visual modes: Rajput patrons 99).33 In the case of the Ṭūṭī-nāma (Tales of a Parrot), a themselves freely commissioned painters working in relatively early Mughal manuscript (ca. 1570), it appears either Mughalizing or distinctly Rajput idioms, as was that about a third of the illustrations were extensively the case among the Kachhwahas of Amber.37 In The overpainted by artists in the Mughal atelier working on Intelligence of Tradition, Molly Aitken asserts that the an earlier set of pages painted by Hindu artists (fig. 17). Rajput encounter with Mughal art was by no means a According to John Seyller’s analysis, the manuscript’s steady assimilation, describing it variously as “adaptive,” apparent mixture of Hindu and Mughal styles was due “selective,” and rejecting.38 not to different painters working side by side—although Despite significant overlap among the style, tech- Akbar’s workshop did accommodate diverse artists— nique, and artists who moved from court to court, but rather to the drive to update the style of the exist- Rajput painting is less well known than Mughal paint- ing illustrations so that they would better match the ing. Nonetheless, it has received more study than Rajput newer ones that were added later by artists in the architecture, in part due to the art market. A number of Mughal atelier. However, he also notes the incorpora- collections of Rajput manuscript paintings came up for tion into the manuscript of new paintings in an older sale in the mid-twentieth century, spurring collectors Hindu style, although the phenomenon was not contin- and connoisseurs to treat them as something other than ued in subsequent manuscripts.34 In other words, the Mughal derivatives. Study and classification were ways “flow of influence” was by no means as passive as that to make them more marketable.39 Additionally, art his- phrase suggests: at times, old visual modes were selec- tory’s high regard for the artists themselves prompts tively employed; at other times they were actively wiped analysis of the hand of individual artists, whereas in the out and replaced or updated by newer ones. more collaborative endeavor of architecture, the hand Later, when painters were hired from Rajput courts, of the master workman can rarely be identified—just they had to change their style for their Mughal patrons. the traditional practices of artisanal workshops. 108 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

enclosed courtyard with white pavilions that look out- ward toward the dramatic exterior landscape in one direction and open inward, through delicate arches, onto the central garden. The quadripartite garden con- sists of sunken beds traversed by a geometrical array of walkways and water channels, flowing from a chādar and chīnī khāna (fig. 3). It has all the attributes of a Mughal garden. Similarly at Bundi (Rajasthan), the pal- ace of the Chauhan Rajputs has a large garden terrace (probably eighteenth century) that forms a chahār bāgh with a central water pool (fig. 18). However, despite their clearly Islamicate form and planning, Amber and Bundi are omitted from surveys of Islamic architecture and, less surprisingly, introductions to world art history. Their cultural hybridity disqualifies them from histories that identify linear chronological development within a well-defined context. These are problems that occur not for reasons intrinsic to the works themselves but because of the way that geographical and historical areas have been defined. “Hybridity” itself is a problematic term because it begs the questions of identity and agency. It assumes that there were original identities—stable and clearly bounded—that interacted to form a hybridized union while ignoring imbalances of power such as relations of dependency due to conquest, economic forces, and gen- Fig. 17. Tūtī-nāma, (Tales of a Parrot): Tale XII: Gardener der inequalities that may have caused or given mean- Releasing the Merchant's Daughter from Her Promise, ca. 1560. ing to the union. But the stability of those human India, Mughal, Reign of Akbar, 16th century. Color and gold identities is by no means as clear as the differentiating on paper, 20.3 × 14.0 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift terms Rajput and Mughal would suggest. The Mughals of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1962.279.100.b themselves were produced by the coupling of Mughal fathers with Rajput mothers, both of whom were them- The fact that the Rajputs do not fit neatly into either selves produced through sexual union—by nature, a the Muslim or the Hindu category of architecture as commingling of difference—in which there is no abso- framed by the international canon of South Asian visual lute, stable identity, only a constant coming into being.40 studies is a methodological problem. Rajput patrons are This is not to say that the clans lacked identity and were rarely included in studies of , indistinguishable. By their visible worshipping at although many of them were full participants in Mughal and temples, the difference in their burial rites, culture and the military and administrative construc- the celebration of different holy days, and the markings tion of the empire. To take one example, the Rajput made on the body itself, they created external signs that Kachhwaha rulers of Amber served as high-ranking insisted on distinct identities. It is in the act of making members of the Mughal administration and married (always in the process), rather than in being (denoting their daughters to Mughal emperors so that they even- something complete), that people perform their cultural tually became enmeshed in the Mughal dynastic line. identities. The making of things and shaping of spaces As described above, their palace at Amber has an are thus critical. THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 109

Fig. 18. Bundi, Chitra Shali Palace garden, eighteenth century. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles)

The term “hybridity” does not disclose the extent to Would they, for example, have regarded the exquisitely which formal typology was associated with identity: it carved and pierced stone screen (jālī) at the Tomb of does not explain why and under what conditions typo- Sheikh Salim al-Din Chisti (tomb built 1581–82, jālī logical forms were exchanged between the Mughals and screens added ca. 1605) (fig. 19), in the of Fateh­ Rajputs. The question has been addressed by architec- pur-Sikri, as derived from Hindu temple architecture, tural historians, who have called attention to the indig- with origins at least as early as the seventh-century tem- enous roots of forms such as the distinctively curving ple at Aihole? Or would they have associated it with the bangla roof (so-called for its Bengali origins), chhatrī (a ceramic screens filling the windows of Timurid and cupola raised on slender supports), corbelled arch, ser- Safavid architecture of Iran? They could have found the pentine bracket, and rooftop terrace, as well as the immediate source in fifteenth-century Sultanate locally quarried red sandstone used in Hindu palace mosques in India, and with such a history of comming­ architecture and, subsequently, in imperial Mughal ling already permeating the subcontinent well before monuments.41 From the perspective of the twenty-first the beginning of the Mughal Empire in 1526, perhaps century it may be easy to attribute the bangla and they would have refused to imagine a binary set of paths chhatrī to Indic origins and the chahār bāgh and hesht by which such an element had to have arrived in behesht (a square or octagonal shape divided into nine Fatehpur-Sikri through either Muslim or Hindu ­carriers. bays) plan to Muslim (and specifically Timurid) sources. “Hybridity” also does not clarify the degree to which Historians make these distinctions for the reasons architectural forms were simply interchangeable signs explained above, but did patrons in the seventeenth that could be appropriated or shed for political expedi- century understand them according to such culturally ence.42 Just as the Mughals were quick to borrow beau- specific Rajput/Mughal or Hindu/Muslim binaries? tiful forms and employ the structural techniques and 110 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 19. Fatehpur-Sikri, tomb of Sheikh Salim al-Din Chisti: Fig. 20. New Delhi, Tomb of Humayun, detail showing water jālī screen. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) channels on tomb terrace. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) talented Hindu and Muslim artists of the Indic region ogy, patronage and regional style, and the dynastic that they conquered, the Hindus appear to have also expression of power and legitimacy, but as they were embraced the arts, forms of dress, and other cultural written with the intent of explaining the buildings, signs associated with the Mughals.43 They adopted and other aspects of palatine architecture, such as furnish- adapted forms with freedom but also selectivity. ings, murals, and gardens, appear only as a subset. This Because the artistic syntax and meanings were differ- is often the case in histories written from the archi­ ent from their own art, the appropriation was not a tectural perspective: gardens appear as secondary direct transfer but a reworking and renegotiation of de­pendencies, designed and inserted into the palatine form and expression. However, paradoxically, while his- envi­ronment after the construction of the major build- torians have celebrated the cultural eclecticism of the ings, even though the material evidence contradicts this Mughals as a source of strength, by which the strands imagined sequence. The Tomb of Humayun (New Delhi, of smaller kingdoms were strategically woven into the finished 1572) (fig. 20) and the Nagaur Fort, to give two larger Mughal imperial fabric, this same eclecticism examples, were constructed with water channels and among the Rajputs has caused them to be excluded spouts embedded in their roofs and terrace floors, from the international canon of South Asian visual which were designed to collect precious rainwater and ­studies. direct it into irrigation cisterns. The water catchment If it is difficult to classify the various schools of Rajput of the main buildings contributed to the functioning of painting and explain their various relationships to the the irrigation system of the whole complex, but it also Mughal workshops, and to find a way of discussing became a powerful visual effect, as the water thus cap- Rajput architecture that does not insist upon assigning tured was then displayed in the large rectangular pool it to either a Muslim or Hindu context, the problems at Nagaur Fort and in the grid of water channels and only increase with landscape because the matter of cul- pools running through the garden of Humayun’s Tomb. tural identification is exacerbated by a disciplinary one. These were not afterthoughts, added after the comple- For many landscape historians, especially those trained tion of the architecture in response to the gardener’s in the discipline of art history, the analytical apparatus sudden demand for adequate water supplies. The gar- of architectural history provides the starting point for dens were conceived in tandem with the buildings.44 landscape studies. Indeed, two of the best books on But the weight of architectural history is such that Rajput architecture—those of Tillotson and Michell— landscape historians often consciously or unconsciously are useful studies of the evolution of architectural typol- adopt the values of the architectural historian, examin- THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 111

Fig. 21. New Delhi, Tomb of Humayun. (Photo: D. Fairchild Ruggles) ing gardens with an eye to the identification of typolo- den meaning can depart from the rigidly unilateral gies (such as the chahār bāgh), artisanal technique theological explanation, which in the field of Islamic (such as cut-stone channels and carved marble basins), gardens usually takes the familiar form of the garden and patronage (categorized as either Mughal or Rajput, being a foretaste of the paradise promised in the Koran but not both). They focus on permanent elements such to the faithful, and the chahār bāgh as an earthly reflec- as walkways and fountains, and often do not even tion of the four rivers of paradise. Humayun’s Tomb gar- attempt to answer the question of the character of the den often provokes such an interpretation. The garden that was planted.45 They view gardens as stable Persianate tomb is characterized by a hesht behesht categories with well-defined forms, created by an archi- plan, monumental central double-shell , and tect according to a plan and having a distinct moment rendered on the façade at various scales (fig. 21). of origin. This is as reductive as the way that historians It stands majestically within a chahār bāgh garden that, treat cultural identities. given the commemorative and funerary purpose of the However, it is possible to conceive of gardens in site, was certainly intended to connote “paradise on entirely different terms: not as grand manipulations of earth.” Of course, any Muslim tomb garden built during the built environment reflecting deep-seated religious or after the Timurid dynasty (1370–1506) had paradisiac beliefs and centralized governmental control, but as, meaning—by then it was so ubiquitous as to be a cli- first, local responses to the climate, soil, and topogra- ché. However, the political motivations underlying the phy and, second, expressions of diverse political and construction of Humayun’s tomb and garden were by cultural identities. Considered thus, the question of gar- no means so commonplace and generalized: the site 112 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

Fig. 22. Raghubir Rai, photograph. (Photo: courtesy of Magnum Photos)

was intended to express a specific set of meanings that tation of the latter as reflections of paradise simply does would link the Mughals to their Timurid forebears and not serve. When used in a Rajput context, the chahār thus confer authority and legitimacy upon Humayun’s bāgh plan must perforce have had an entirely different son Akbar, who (possibly together with Humayun’s symbolic resonance, because in Hindu philosophy and widow) had built the tomb as much to honor his religion, the understanding of death and the afterlife, deceased father as to assert Humayun, and by extension and the rituals by which those attitudes are expressed, himself, as the rightful ruler of the nascent Mughal are wholly different from those of Islam.47 An extraor- Empire.46 This political meaning is a more probing dinary photograph by Raghubir Rai shows the dry edges explanation than the more obvious paradisiac explana- of the Yamuna River as it passes through Agra (fig. 22): tion of the garden because it requires an examination the contrast between the human skull in the foreground of the particular motivations of the patron, the politi- and the monumental Taj on the far bank calls to mind cal conditions of the moment, and the specific cultural the difference between Muslim observance of burial conditions of the audiences. and entombment and the Hindu practice of cremation, If the symbolism of Islamic gardens can be attributed particularly along the banks of the sacred Ganges, of to a complex array of economic and political as well as which the Yamuna is a tributary. It hardly needs to be environmental concerns, it is especially important for said that Rajput gardens, as well as Hindu gardens in the interpretation of Rajput gardens, since the interpre- general and Buddhist gardens, connoted something dif- THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 113 ferent than Islamic gardens: the question is why the quadripartite plan, with its well-recognized paradisiac iconography, was used and what it meant. Followers of Hinduism did not construct compa­- rable tombs for interment, but they did embrace the ­four-part garden plan for palatine complexes, where pleasure and politics were defining attributes, and by the sixteenth century they had developed commemo- rative monuments such as the large-scale memorial chhatrī.48 Hindu cenotaphs were often situated near bodies of water, either natural or manmade, and some- times had a park-like setting, as in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century commemorative chhatrīs that still Fig. 23. Amber, chhatrīs (date unknown). (Photo: D. Fair­ stand outside of Amber (fig. 23). But, unlike Islamic child Ruggles) mausolea, they were not situated in chahār bāghs because the chahār bāgh layout of gardens such as those at the Amber Fort did not have a direct association with was a sign of pleasure, in the more general sense of burial, the human body, and eternity. They were not “heavenly.” read as metaphorical references to paradise by their The Rajput gardens that most adhere to the Islamic patrons or the patrons’ associates. Therefore, when the garden canon are easiest to study because we can apply quadripartite plan was employed at the center of the to them our knowledge of their Islamic counterparts Amber Fort, the easily recognizable chahār bāgh was a and because that very process of translation into an sign not of paradise but of the contemporary political Islamic idiom leaves the categories of Muslim/Mughal landscape and the cultural situation of the patrons, the and Hindu/Rajput intact. Thus the courtyard and ter- Rajput Kachhwahas, who had very close political and race gardens of the Amber Fort receive the most atten- family alliances with the Mughals.49 One of the Kachh- tion, while those in Orchha, the Nagaur Fort, and the waha daughters was married to the Mughal emperor City Palace of Udaipur—where the gardens are neither Akbar in 1562 and produced the son that became the strict cross-axial chahār bāghs nor Kashmiri-style next Mughal emperor. That son, Jahangir, married stepped terraces and indeed fit no recognized typol- another daughter of the Kachhwaha House, who gave ogy—are hardly known. These cases suggest that the birth to his first son, Khusrau (the future Shah Jahan [r. widespread (but myopic) insistence on the chahār bāgh 1628–58]), in 1592. as the quintessential Islamic garden form may have dis- In later palaces of the Rajputs and other princely tracted scholars from recognizing other kinds of formal Hindu dynasties, the chahār bāgh garden plan may have planning, even in contexts such as Rajput forts, where harkened back to a golden age of empire, before the the patrons and primary audience were not Muslim and Mughals began to weaken and the British presence did not look to the same tradition of landscape plan- became threatening. It is even more likely that by the ning and meaning. Moreover, in pursuing a model late seventeenth century, in those cases when the defined by precise geometrical form (a practice learned chahār bāgh was employed by non-Muslim patrons, it from architectural history), scholars have too often held no particular significance as a specifically Mughal overlooked the rich trove of references to sacred land- or Muslim sign but was simply a common and available scapes such as pools and groves in Sanskritic literature, South Asian garden form.50 Even among the Mughals, which are characterized not by form but by function the quadripartite plan did not always signal paradise in and meaning.51 In addition to references to the deities the eschatological sense and was not used exclusively and the sacred spaces associated with them, the litera- in tombs: it was also used in palace gardens, where it ture also sheds light on early Indian court gardens, 114 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES which Daud Ali shows to have been idealized spaces in those places where nature has distinctive character- with formulaic components: spectacular waterworks, istics, such as springs, ponds, rivers, crossings, moun- wooded bowers, and a hill (often an artificial mound). tains, forests, and trees. But perhaps we should consider They were sumptuously appointed with textiles and the other response, which is to seek to design and ­create wall paintings that invited recreation, romance, and fes- places of worldly pleasure for mortals as well as places tivity. Most importantly, he argues that in Buddhism, that might, in their shady arbors and deep waters, actu- “celestial gardens developed in close dialogue with their ally invite the gods to dwell there. earthly counterparts.” Early royal patrons sometimes tried to emulate the magnificent wonder of heavenly Department of Landscape Architecture, gardens, with pools of perfumed water, artificial trees University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with gold flowers, and embankments of sand made from pearls: these “formed an important space where the realm itself was projected and thought about.”52 This is NOTES very close to the kind of arguments regarding the gar- den as political and environmental metaphor that I Author’s note: This paper began as a presentation in the Nagaur made in Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces (Rajasthan) Garden Workshop, January 28–February 1, 2006. I of Islamic Spain (2000), and indicates a commonality am grateful to the Museum Trust, His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II, and James L. Wescoat Jr., for the invitation among early gardens that may have been due to the gar- to participate in that workshop. Research on Orchha and Amber den’s expressive capacity as an aestheticized environ- was conducted with a senior fellowship from the American Insti- mental response rather than the result of stylistic or tute for Indian Studies. I wish to express my deep thanks to Milo technical evolution (as in architecture). Beach and Catherine Asher for their thoughtful comments on the paper at various stages, to Amita Sinha, with whom I have The blindness to autochthonous formal types and had many productive conversations about Orchha, and to Kath- conceptual models has given rise to the assumption that ryn Gleason, who generously shared her preliminary excavation all designed landscape forms in South Asia were an findings after the Nagaur Workshop. Islamic, and more specifically Persian, importation, with the result that Rajput gardens have either been 1. Rajput is a Sanskrit word meaning “prince.” The Rajputs, who claim to be descended from deities, are not a dynasty regarded as derivative or ignored altogether. Ultimately, but a large group of warriors who gained dominance in it may be useful to discard the category of “Islamic gar- northern India sometime between the sixth and ninth den”—and with it the corollary “Rajput garden”—and century. In this essay, regnal dates are given for individual instead acknowledge the complexity and interdepen- dynasties of Rajput rulers, but the dates are not those of the clan as a whole. dence of South Asian visual culture, as South Asianists 2. On the Amber Fort, see Oscar Reuther, Indische Paläste have already done. This is particularly appropriate in und Wohnhäuser (Berlin, 1925), and G. H. R. Tillotson, The the case of gardens because, responding to specific geo- Rajput Palaces: The Development of an Architectural Style, climatic conditions such as the monsoon, intense heat, 1450–1750 (New Haven, 1987). Specifically on its gardens, see D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Gardens,” in Art of India: Prehis­ hilly or flat landscape morphology, and a regional pal- tory to the Present, ed. Frederick Asher (Chicago, 2003), ette of trees and plants, the gardens of both 258–70, and D. Fairchild Ruggles, “The Framed Landscape and Hindus in South Asia drew upon the same reper- in Islamic Spain and Mughal India,” in The Garden: Myth, toire of traditional cultivation practices. There were a Meaning, and Metaphor, ed. Brian J. Day, Working Papers in the Humanities 12 (Windsor, Ontario, 2003), 21–50. On great many pragmatic concerns that garden architects the Kachhwahas’ patronage, see Catherine Asher, “Excavat- had in common, regardless of whether they served a ing Communalism: Kachhwaha Rajadharma and Mughal Muslim patron, who perceived the garden as a foretaste Sovereignty,” in Rethinking a Millennium: Perspectives on of the paradise promised in the Koran, or a Rajput Indian History from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century; Essays for Harbans Mukhia, ed. Rajat Datta (Delhi, 2008), patron, who saw in pools and groves the presence of the 222–46. gods. Historians have typically understood the Hindu 3. Ebba Koch, “The Mughal Waterfront Garden,” in Gardens approach to nature as responsive—seeing gods present in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design, THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 115

ed. Attilio Petruccioli (Leiden, 1997), 140–60; Ebba Koch, pretation, Conservation and Implications (Washington, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra D.C., and Lahore, 1996); James L. Wescoat Jr. and Joachim (New York and London, 2006). Wolschke-Bulmahn, eds., : Sources, Places, 4. A map of Amber, made of cloth, was drawn in 1711 for M. S. Representations, and Prospects (Washington, D.C., 1996); Jai Singh (collection of the National Museum, New Delhi). Koch, Complete Taj Mahal; and Ruggles, Islamic Gardens, It was published by Susan Gole, Indian Maps and Plans: especially chap. 10 and “List of Gardens and Sites.” From Earliest Times to the Advent of European Surveys (New 15. Allison Busch, “Literary Responses to the Mughal Impe- Delhi, 1989), 170–71, and is discussed in C. Asher, “Excavat- rium: The Historical Poems of Keśavdās,” South Asia ing Communalism,” 222–46, esp. 231–32. Research 25, 1 (2005): 31–54. On Rajput histories in general, 5. D. Fairchild Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscape (Phila- see Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Lit­ delphia, 2008), chap. 10. erature of Mughal India (Oxford, 2011). On Bundi, in addi- 6. B. L. Dhama, A Memoir on the Temple of Jagatshiromani at tion to Busch, “Literary Responses,” see the multivolume Amber (Jaipur, 1977). I was also fortunate to hear Giles Til- (and unpublished) epic Vamsha Bhaskar, by Suraj Mal lotson deliver a paper on this subject at a garden workshop Mishran (1841), discussed in The Historians and Sources of held in Nagaur (January 30–February 3, 2006). History of Rajasthan, ed. V. S. Bhatnagar and G. N. Sharma 7. Edward Rothfarb, Orchha and Beyond: Design at the Court (Jaipur, 1992). The Ishvaravilasa Mahalavya, by the court of Raja Bir Singh Dev , published as a special issue poet Krishna Bhatta (ca. 1749), describes Jaipur in the sec- of Marg 63, 3 (Mumbai, 2012), 99–101. ond quarter of the eighteenth century: Krishna Bhatta and 8. Ruggles, Islamic Gardens, 135–36, 220–21. Mathuranatha Shastri, Ishvaravilasamahakavyam (Jay- 9. Probably added during the 2002 INTACH heritage preserva- apura, 1958), cited in Ashim K. Roy, History of the Jaipur tion campaign: see Priyaleen Singh, “Working in Historic City (New Delhi, 1978). On Mewar, see Richard D. Saran and Cities,” http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/542/542%20 Norman P. Ziegler, The Meṛtīyo Rāṭhoṛs of Meṛto, Rājasthān: priyaleen%20singh.htm (accessed December 12, 2005). Select Translations Bearing on the History of a Rajpūt Family, 10. On this, see Jennifer Joffee and D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Rajput 1462–1660, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2001). Gardens and Landscapes,” in Middle East Garden Tradi­ 16. For example, the inscriptions from Udaipur published by tions, ed. Michel Conan (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 278–80. N. P. Chakravarti and B. Ch. Chhabra in multiple volumes 11. Minakshi Jain, Architecture of a Royal Camp (Ahmedabad, of Epigraphia Indica (1951–53) and discussed in Jennifer 2009). Minakshi Jain and team, “Ahhichatragarh, the Fort Joffee, “Art, Architecture, and Politics in Mewar, 1628–1710” of Nagaur; Conservation Works Report to Facilitate Garden (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2005). Workshop 30/01/06–3/02/06” (unpublished). My observa- 17. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han or the Cen­ tions on Nagaur were made on the basis of fieldwork on tral and Western Rajpoot States of India, 2 vols. (New Delhi, site, but the following conclusions were made in discussion 1971; orig. pub. 1829–32). with Minakshi Jain, James Wescoat, Giles Tillotson, Ratish 18. Busch, “Literary Responses,” 31–33. Nanda, Milo Beach, Kathryn Gleason, Catherine Glynn, 19. Abū’l Fazl Allāmī, Āʿīn-i Akbarī, (which itself constitutes Amita Sinha, and others who attended the 2006 Nagaur one third of the much larger Akarbarnāma), vol. 1 trans. H. Garden Workshop. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1873), vol. 2 trans. H.S. Jarrett (Cal- 12. Because of the difficulty of supplying enough water, I was cutta 1891), vol. 3 trans. H.S. Jarrett (Calcutta 1896); The not convinced of the lotus hypothesis, imagining the gar- Akbar nāma of Abu-l-Fazl: History of the Reign of Akbar, den as an orchard, like Orchha. But Rahul Mehrotra per- Including an Account of His Predecessors, trans. H. Bev- suaded me by pointing out the visual logic of the kiosks’ eridge, 3 vols. (Calcutta, 1902–39); Gulbadan Begam, The placement: positioned on the edge of the large pool yet History of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-nāma), trans. Annette providing an overview of the garden that the presence of Beveridge (London, 1902)—a new translation of Gulbadan trees would have blocked. Begam’s work is found in Three Memoirs of Humāyun, trans. 13. On artistic exchanges with the Deccan, see Catherine and ed. Wheeler M. Thackston, 2 vols. (Costa Mesa, Calif., Glynn, “Bijapur Themes in Painting,” in Court 2009); Memoirs of Zehir-Ed-Din Muhammed Baber, Emperor Painting in Rajasthan, ed. Andrew Topsfield (Mumbai, of Hindustan, trans. John Leyden and William Erskine, 2 2000), 65–77; Shanane Davis, The Bikaner School: Usta Arti­ vols. (London, 1826); The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs sans and Their Heritage (, 2008); and Molly Aitken, of Bābur), trans. Annette Beveridge, 2 vols. (London, 1912– The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting (New 21); The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, Haven and London, 2010), 31. trans. Wheeler Thackston (Washington, D.C., 1996); The 14. The most important comparative works on the Mughal Tūzuk-i Jahāngīrī, or Memoirs of Jahāngir, trans. Alexan- garden are: Sylvia Crowe, Sheila Haywood, and Susan Jel- der Rogers and Henry Beveridge (London: Royal Asiatic licoe, The Gardens of Mughal India (London, 1972); Eliza- Society, 1909–14), with new trans. by Wheeler Thackston beth Moynihan, Paradise as a Garden in Persia and Mughal (Washington, D.C., and New York, 1999). However, in the India (New York, 1979); Mahmood Hussain, Abdul Rehman, acknowledgements to the 1990 translation of ʿInāyat Khān, and James L. Wescoat Jr., eds., The Mughal Garden: Inter­ The Shah Jahan nama of ʿInayat Khan: An Abridged History 116 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Compiled by His Royal and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture Librarian; The Nineteenth-century Manuscript Translation 650–1250 (New Haven and London, 2001; a significant revi- of A.R. Fuller (, add. 30,777), ed. and comp. sion of the earlier book by the same title published in 1987), Wayne Begley and Z. A. Desai (Delhi and New York, 1990), and Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, The Art and Wayne Begley laments the lack of translated materials Architecture of Islam 1250–1800 (New Haven and London, recording the reign of Shah Jahan. He notes the exception 1994). of ʿInayat Khan’s history of Shah Jahan, which was trans- 27. Ruggles, “Islamic Art” (chap. 8), and Frederick Asher, “Art lated in the mid-nineteenth century by A. R. Fuller, but of South and Southeast Asia before 1200” (chap. 9) and “Art points to the fact that it remained an unpublished manu- of South and Southeast Asia after 1200” (chap. 23), in Art script in the collection of the British Library. Nonetheless, History, ed. Michael Cothren and Marilyn Stokstad, 4th ed. there were even fewer available translations for the Rajputs (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2010), 260–89, 290–323, 770–89. and they mostly attracted only local interest. Unfortunately, the Cothren-Stokstad volume does not 20. Reuther, Indische Paläste und Wohnhäuser; Tillotson, clearly acknowledge the specific authorship of individual Rajput Palaces; and George Michell and Antonio Martinelli, chapters. The Royal Palaces of India (New York and London, 1994). 28. David Talbot Rice, Islamic Art (London, 1965; rev. ed. 1975), To these can be added less comprehensive works such as and Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (Lon- Sidney Toy, The Strongholds of India (Melbourne, 1957), as don, 1999). well as G. S. Ghurye, Rajput Architecture (Bombay, 1968), 29. The term “Hindu” is used here with considerable unease. which, despite the book’s title, ignores all the Rajput pal- It is convenient as a term that broadly describes a set of aces except . Prominent among the older works is religious practices and philosophies, and the architecture James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture and artifacts that were produced by those religious and (London, 1891), which included Rajput palaces in a short philosophical practices. But used to describe people and chapter called “Civil Architecture,” 470–88. The inclusion their cultural identity, it first conflates religion with culture of Rajput architecture in such surveys, however, does not and then condenses a variety of cultural identities into a necessarily mean that the authors ever visited the more single, simple, homogenous group. However, there is noth- distant sites. ing homogenous about the group of South Asians typically 21. I am focusing on the Rajputs, but the same lament could defined as Hindu, other than that they are not Muslim. be voiced for the Marathas, Jats, and other groups who Nonetheless, I have used the word cautiously, simply for patronized art and architecture in South Asia. want of a better term and following the justification of S. 22. Pramod Chandra, On the Study of Indian Art (Cambridge, Radhakrishnan, “Hinduism,” in A Cultural , Mass., 1983). ed. A. L. Basham (New Delhi, 1975), 60. 23. The interest in South Asia is relatively recent among histo- 30. A welcome exception to this is Catherine Asher and Cyn- rians of Islamic art from Europe and North America, stem- thia Talbot, India before Europe (Cambridge, 2006). The ming in part from the political events of 1979–80, when the myth of stable Muslim and Hindu cultural identities in Iranian Revolution effectively closed the doors of Iran to an earlier period is the topic of Finbarr Flood’s Objects of Western visitors. The taking of hostages in Lebanon and the Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Gulf War in Kuwait and Iraq made those areas less acces- Encounter (Princeton, N.J., 2009). sible and safe for Western scholars. With archaeological 31. Milo Cleveland Beach, Early Mughal Painting (Cambridge, fieldwork rendered difficult or impossible in Iran and Iraq, Mass., 1987), esp. 2–3; Aitken, Intelligence of Tradition; the next two generations of graduate students in art history Joanna Williams, ed., Kingdom of the Sun: Indian Court and turned their attentions to South Asia. Village Art from the of Mewar (San Francisco, 24. Finbarr Flood, “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxon- 2007); and Debra Diamond and Catherine Ann Glynn, eds., omy, and the Eastern ‘Turks’,” 24 (2007): 79–115. Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Wash- 25. Ernst Kühnel, Islamic Art and Architecture, trans. Katherine ington, D.C., 2008). Watson (German first edition 1962; Ithaca, Cornell Univer- 32. John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: The sity Press, 1966), 159 and 164. The sentiment is echoed in Freer Rāmāyana and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ʿAbd modern India, where for political reasons some prefer to al-Raḥīm, Artibus Asiae, Supplementum 42 (Zurich, in see Muslim and Hindu as utterly distinct. Such a perspec- association with the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., tive obviously impedes the ability to study Rajput palace 1999), 284–88. architecture, where the distinction argument does not 33. C. Asher, “Excavating Communalism,” 224. hold. 34. John Seyller, “Overpainting in the Cleveland Ṭūṭīnāma,” 26. The Pelican History of Art series divides Islamic art and Artibus Asiae 52 (1992): 283–318. Seyller refutes an earlier architecture into the periods 650–1250 and 1250–1800: The theory of Pramod Chandra and Daniel J. Ehnbom, The first volume contains only a few pages on India, but the sec- Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal ond volume covers South Asia from the Sultanate through Painting (Graz, 1976). the Mughal periods. Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, 35. Personal communication, June 2006. THE RAJPUTS OF SOUTH ASIA 117

36. Aitken, Intelligence of Tradition, 17–22. 45. This is a particularly vexing problem in South Asia, where 37. Catherine Glynn, “A Rājasthānī Princely Album: Rājput the type of planting done in the Mughal era was almost Patronage of Mughal-Style Painting,” Artibus Asiae 60, 2 entirely replaced by British-style planting. Few historians (2000): 222–64. or archaeologists have explored this colonial layer. Recent 38. Aitken, Intelligence of Tradition, 41. exceptions are Eugenia Herbert, “The Taj and the Raj: Gar- 39. On Rajput Painting, see Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, den Imperialism in India,” Studies in the History of Gardens Rajput Painting (London, 1916); Pratapaditya Pal, Court and Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 25, Paintings of India, 16th–19th Centuries (New York, 1983); 4 (2005): 250–72; Eugenia Herbert, Flora’s Empire: British Beach, Early Mughal Painting; Milo C. Beach, Mughal Gardens in India (Philadelphia, 2011); and A. Mukherji, Red and Rajput Painting (Cambridge, 1992); Topsfield, Court Fort of Shahjahanbad (New Delhi, 2004). Painting in Rajasthan. Aitken, Williams, Seyller, and Dia- 46. Lowry, “Humayun’s Tomb”; D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Huma- mond and Glynn are cited in nn. 31 and 32 above. An yun’s Tomb and Garden: Typologies and Visual Order,” important international exhibition of Rajput painting was in Petruccioli, Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim held December 1960– January 1961 at Asia House in New Empires, 173–86. York (catalogue edited by Sherman Lee, Rajput Painting 47. Historians of South Asia have understood this more quickly [New York, 1960]). Interestingly, when the Metropoli- than historians of Islamic art. For examples of discussions tan’s Museum of Art’s exhibition India! opened in 1985, it of Indian gardens as expressions of political power, envi- received stinging reviews because of the evident absence ronmental control, and pleasure, see Catherine Asher, of Hindu culture in the show’s presentation of Indian art. “Gardens of the Nobility: Raja Man Singh and the Bagh-i See, for example, Arthur Coleman Danto, “The Near Pavil- Wah,” in Hussain, Rehman, and Wescoat, Mughal Garden, ions!” in The Nation 241, 13 (October 26, 1985): 412–14. The 61–72, as well as the various contributions to Diamond and observation about marketability was made by Milo Beach, Glynn, Garden and Cosmos, and Ruggles, Islamic Gardens, personal communication, May 2006. 131–45. For the early centuries of the common era and Bud- 40. A parallel example is discussed in D. Fairchild Ruggles, dhist associations with the garden (which may have been “Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy, and Accul- absorbed into later Hindu belief), see Daud Ali, “Gardens in turation in al-Andalus,” Journal of Medieval and Early Mod­ Early Indian Court Life,” Studies in History, n.s., 19, 2 (2003): ern Studies 34, 1 (2004): 65–94. 221–52. 41. Glenn D. Lowry, “Humayun’s Tomb: Form, Function, and 48. On Maratha chhatrīs built in emulation of Rajput practices, Meaning in Early Mughal Architecture,” Muqarnas 4 (1987): see Melia Belli, “Keeping Up with the Rajputs: Appropria- 133–48; Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its tion and the Articulation of Sacrality and Political Legit- History and Development (1526–1858) (Munich, 1991); Cathe- imacy in Scindia Funerary Art,” Archives of Asian Art 61 rine Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge, 1992); (2011): 91–106. An extensive list of cenotaphs, mostly Rajput, Flood, “Lost in Translation.” is given in Ratanlal Mishra, Memorial Monuments of Rajast­ 42. There is a burgeoning literature on “composite culture” han: The Cenotaph (Udaipur and Delhi, 2004); however, his and the idea of essential versus composite (or “hybrid”) refusal to admit any Islamic influence on commemorative categories of identity. Cynthia Talbot succinctly summa- architecture in South Asia reflects a narrow-minded and rizes the debate in “Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: inaccurate view of history. Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-,” Compara­ 49. For a detailed explanation of the close political and kinship tive Studies in Society and History 37, 4 (1995): 692–722. relations between the two houses, see Catherine Glynn, 43. Phillip Wagoner, “ ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’: Dress, “Evidence of Royal Painting for the Amber Court,” Arti­ Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijay- bus Asiae 56, 1–2 (1996): 67–68, and Glynn, “A Rājasthānī anagara,” Journal of Asian Studies 55, 4 (1996): 851–80. With Princely Album,” 222–64. regard to differing cultural uses of space, see Amita Sinha 50. Joffee and Ruggles, “Rajput Gardens and Architecture,” and D. Fairchild Ruggles, “The Yamuna Riverfront, India: A 269–85. Comparative Study of Islamic and Hindu Traditions in Cul- 51. On references to nature in Sanskritic literature, see Amita tural Landscapes,” Landscape Journal 23, 2 (2004): 141–52. Sinha, “Nature in Hindu Art, Architecture and Landscape,” 44. Similarly, the rooftop catchment system in the Mosque Landscape Research 20, 1 (1995): 3–10. For painted scenes, of Córdoba collects water for the courtyard of orange and see M. S. Randhawa, Kangra Paintings of the Gita Govinda, palm trees below. D. Fairchild Ruggles, “From the Heavens 2nd ed. (New Delhi, 1982). On how Hindu patrons might and Hills: The Flow of Water to the Fruited Trees and Ablu- have understood a Mughal garden such as the Bagh-i Wah, tion Fountains in the Great Mosque of Cordoba,” in Rivers see C. Asher, “Excavating Communalism.” of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair 52. Ali, “Gardens in Early Indian Court Life,” 248–49. and Jonathan Bloom (London, 2009), 81–103.