The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c7.50

c7.50

The "Mount of Felicity" in the centre of his gardens, where he and his boon companions held their music and drinking parties, was nothing but the Muhammadan secular notion of the mystic holy mountain, Meru, the pivot of the universe, of which the Indian Vishnu shrine is the symbol. For untold centuries before the Prophet of Mecca was born it had been the high place upon which the Indian village council tree was planted. One may even admit the possibility that the irrigated garden plan might have been a more ancient idea than the other; that the Indo-Aryan village took the lay-out of the garden plot as the basis of its organisation. But more probably the village scheme was originally the plan of the military camp of the Aryan tribes when they first established themselves in the valley of the Indus.