1781.c.9(16)

Genre: Landscape Photography

This view, looking along a riverside ghat, towards an octagonal tower surmounted by a chhatri, is identified as '2a. Utilitarian complex, preserved but ruinous' in Ebba Koch, 'The complete Taj Mahal' (Thames and Hudson, London, 2006): 'This type of complex was used for bazaars, and in this function it must have served the adjoining gardens. In 1923 it was being used as a cattleyard' (p. 37). Boileau's text for this series of photographs reads as follows: 'These five plates [12-16] comprise views taken along the left bank of the Jumna, and exhibit the river faces of the royal and other gardens in the order in which they occur from South, Northwards, i.e. up the stream. With the exception of the Ram Bagh (Plate XV), they are now for the most part deserted and in ruins, or are partially let out to native gardeners for cultivation. The gardens are generally of great extent, laid out with paved walks, and extensively furnished with fountains. They were enclosed on the three land sides with massive walls, and were open to the river, on which side magnificent pavilions were constructed, with suites of apartments in the basement leading on to extensive terraces jutting out into the stream. The angles of each garden were marked by towers; those on the river face being several stories high, massive and elegant in design, surmounted with graceful cupolas, and faced or constructed entirely with red sandstone. The garden of the Princess Juhanara was probably the most complete and tasty, as well as the most costly of those laid out on this bank of the river, but it exists now only as a monument of the transitory nature of all earthly grandeur ... Plate XVI represents the Ghat, or watering place, where the cattle of the neighbourhood are driven down to drink of the refreshing water of the Jumna Mae, and also the south-west Boorj of the north-east of the gardens on the left bank of the river.'