Indo-Iranian Gardens: Garden Sites in the Deccan in Southern India

The paper examines some sixteenth and seventeenth-century Indo-Iranian garden sites of the Deccan in southern India. It argues that terrain and water management practice in southern India resulted in a landscape expression that differed markedly from that in northern India and Iran. The gardens of the Deccan, located near large water storage tanks, were responses to the geographical context and to native cultural practice. This is strongly suggested in the evidence of water pavilions and the detailing of water edges at, or near, Bijapur, in the sultanate of the Adil Shahs. The placement of palaces on hills overlooking expanses of water and gardens, as at Hyderabad and Golconda, in the sultanate of the Qutb Shahs, was also a contextual response. Gardens were enjoyed during the season of the rains, at Bijapur as well as at Golconda/Hyderabad. Although ladies accompanied the sultans during their visits to gardens, gardens specifically for ladies, called zenana gardens, were located only in the citadels where the privacy of ladies could be ensured. The public, in general, could enjoy royal pleasure gardens only occasionally, following a royal visit. Gardens in the Deccan, in common with those elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent, were used not only by day but especially in the evening. Because many Indian flowers open for pollination in the evening and are white, strongly scented, and tubular to attract nocturnal insects, an Indic tradition of an evening, or moon garden, existed. Traditionally, in the Indian subcontinent, scented flowers have long been associated with love and arousal and it would seem that amorous pursuits were enjoyed in gardens, in particular, at the cooler time of the day when flowers released their fragrances. In conclusion, it could be said that although the gardens of the Deccan share a family likeness with other Indo-Iranian gardens and were used in similar ways, the terrain of the Deccan and the reliance in this region on native Indic practices of water storage and management resulted in landscapes that were rooted in the Indian soil; if, stylistically, these gardens could be considered Iranian, temperamentally they were very much Indian.