| seeing the unseen
THE GARDEN STORIES
Vaidehi Bhagwat
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The Indian Garden?
Ancient literature – the Ramayana, for example – represents the garden as a ‘van’ or a woodland. And then, of course, there are gardens that are attached to temples and palaces, wadis, the public gardens, zoological and botanical gardens, and private gardens. Rajput patrons expressed the form with rectilinear and curving flower beds, or floating pavilions, water features, and incorporated with spaces resembling sacred groves. And then, as time passed, the idea of the ‘garden’ in India – for the longest time – came to be associated with Islamic and Persian traditions, where the Garden was akin to Paradise. The conversation was later extended to the formal English gardens introduced to India by the British.
All this to say that the idea of the Indian garden is infinite!
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