Mughal Gardens Of Kashmir
By Mohan Kishen Tiku "......The garden-nymphs were brilliant, their cheeks shone like lamps, There were fragrant buds on their stems, Like dark amulets on the arms of the beloved, The wakeful, ode-rehearsing nightingales......" Thus in the year 1620, wrote Emperor Salim Jahangir of the beauties of the famous Vale of Kashmir.
These lines are recorded in the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri.
The Mughal-emperors laidout many famous gardens in Kashmir, which are still in existence.
They are part of the Kashmir culture.
All Mughal gardens of Kashmir are what Taj Mahal at Agra is to India.
The said gardens are almost situated around the famous Dal Lake.
A person with fine aesthetic sense will find it really thrilling to copy a picture of such beautiful real' gardens on a canvas with his brush.
These gardens are worth to visit.
To be in the famous Nishat Bagh and Shalimar garden is to be close to nature and at the same time to feel with the poet that the scene is truly reminiscent of "When some face, Divinely fair unveils before our eyes, Some women beautiful unspeakably, And the blood quickens, And spirit leaps......" These gardens of the Vale are beauty-spots worth staying at for some time.
One can forget himself and enjoy the loveliness of these gardens.
Hardly any lover of nature can afford to miss the visit to these gardens.
These two gardens have been built by Jehangir and Shah Jehan for their wives.
Most of the visitors to Kashmir visit these garden by road or by boats.
Under the delightful shades of the Chinar-trees, to inhale the fragrance of the flowers around the gardens gives one a new life.
The gardens are in their own way supremely attractive and beautiful.
They have handsome fountains spouting limpid water, fretted-marble water-slides, lovely flower beds and Chinar-trees.
One can see local people and tourists thronging these gardens.
The floating gardens of the Dal Lake all round present a beautiful and calm glory of the nature to behold.
Aldous Huxley expressed his awe through the following lines .
"The little Chashma Shahi is architecturally the most charming of the garden near Srinagar.
And the loveliest for trees and waters in Achhbal, at the upper end of the Valley; while far-off Verinag where Jehangir enclosed the blue deep source of the Jhelum in an octagonal tank, surrounded by arcades, has a strange and desolate beauty all its own.
If the Kashmiri gardens are beautiful, that is the work not much of man as of Nature.
The formal beds are full of Zinnius and scarbt cannes......" Akbar-the great, was the first Mughal King to visit Kashmir.
He arranged to built a massive fort on the hill of Hari Parbat.
This overlooks whole Srinagar city.
He also laidout the Naseem Bagh.
Kashmir University has been constructed over here and in its neighbour stands Ziarat Hazrat Bal.
Many gardens which Mughal Kings laid out have disappeared, but fortunately few of them are still maintained which attract people from all over the world even today.
A Persian poet's words of praise showered on Mughal gardens when translated in English go as:- "......Morning in the shadow of the Nishat Bagh, Evening in the breeze of the Nasiam, Shalimar and its Tulip fields, These are the places of pleasure in Kashmir and none else......"