 |
 The Humble Administrator's Garden first edition cover. | |
| Author | Vikram Seth |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Stephen Raw |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Carcanet Press Ltd. |
Publication date | 1985 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 62 pp |
| ISBN | 0-85635-583-6 |
| OCLC | 60051986 |
| LC Class | MLCS 89/19156 (P) |
The Humble Administrator's Garden is a collection of poetry written by Vikram Seth. It is his first collection, published in 1985.
The book has three sections, each containing works on a geography of Seth's life. The first section, titled Wutong, is inspired by his years of study and travel in China. Neem, the second section, has poems with themes from his native India, and the last is Live-Oak, with California-based topics.
Babur, born Mīrzā Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad, was the founder of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. He was a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan through his father and mother respectively. He was also given the posthumous name of Firdaws Makani.
The Taj Mahal is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
Babri Masjid was a mosque in Ayodhya, India, at a site believed by many Hindus to be the birthplace of Hindu deity Rama. It has been a focus of dispute between the Hindu and Muslim communities since the 18th century. According to the mosque's inscriptions, it was built in 1528–29 by Mir Baqi, a general of the Mughal emperor Babur. The mosque was attacked and demolished by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992, which ignited communal violence across the Indian subcontinent.
Neem Karoli Baba or Neeb Karori Baba, known to his followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and a devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman. He is known outside India for being the spiritual master of a number of Americans who travelled to India in the 1960s and 70s, the most well-known being the spiritual teachers Ram Dass and Bhagavan Das, and the musicians Krishna Das and Jai Uttal. His ashrams are in Kainchi, Vrindavan, Rishikesh, Shimla, Neem Karoli village near Khimasepur in Farrukhabad, Bhumiadhar, Hanumangarhi, and Delhi in India and in Taos, New Mexico, United States.
Vikram Seth is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon.
Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about 230 kilometres (140 mi) south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is the fourth-most populous city in Uttar Pradesh and twenty-third most populous city in India.
Mughal gardens are a type of garden built by the Mughals. This style was influenced by the Persian gardens particularly the Charbagh structure, which is intended to create a representation of an earthly utopia in which humans co-exist in perfect harmony with all elements of nature.
The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate gardens created by scholars, poets, former government officials, soldiers and merchants, made for reflection and escape from the outside world. They create an idealized miniature landscape, which is meant to express the harmony that should exist between man and nature.
The Bāburnāma is the memoirs of Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad Bābur (1483–1530), founder of the Mughal Empire and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is written in the Chagatai language, known to Babur as Türki ("Turkic"), the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids. During the reign of emperor Akbar, the work was translated into Persian, the usual literary language of the Mughal court, by a Mughal courtier, Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, in AH 998.
The Humble Administrator's Garden is a Chinese garden in Suzhou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most famous of the gardens of Suzhou. The garden is located at 178 Northeast Street (东北街178号), Gusu District. At 78 mu (亩), it is the largest garden in Suzhou and is considered by some to be the finest garden in all of southern China.
Charbagh or Chahar Bagh is a Persian and Indo-Persian quadrilateral garden layout based on the four gardens of Paradise mentioned in the Quran. The quadrilateral garden is divided by walkways or flowing water into four smaller parts. They are found in countries throughout Western Asia and South Asia, including Iran and India.
Jamnalal Kaniram Bajaj was an Indian industrialist. He founded the Bajaj Group of companies in the 1920s, and the group now has 24 companies, including six that are listed on the bourses. He was also a close and beloved associate of Mahatma Gandhi, who is known to have often declared that Jamnalal was his fifth son.
The Tomb of Jahangir is a 17th-century mausoleum built for the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. The mausoleum dates from 1637, and is located in Shahdara Bagh near city of Lahore, Pakistan, along the banks of the Ravi River. The site is famous for its interiors that are extensively embellished with frescoes and marble, and its exterior that is richly decorated with pietra dura. The tomb, along with the adjacent Akbari Sarai and the Tomb of Asif Khan, are part of an ensemble currently on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status.
The Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical, and socio-religious debate in India, centred on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The issues revolve around the control of a site traditionally regarded among Hindus to be the birthplace of their deity Rama, the history and location of the Babri Masjid mosque at the site, and whether a previous Hindu temple was demolished or modified to create the mosque.
The Garden of Babur is a historic park in Kabul, Afghanistan, and also has the tomb of the first Mughal emperor Babur. The garden is thought to have been developed around 1528, when Babur gave orders for the construction of an "avenue garden" in Kabul, described in some detail in his memoirs, the Baburnama.
Swaminarayan Mandir, Gadhada, also known as Gopinathji Dev mandir, is a Hindu temple in Gadhada, Gujarat, India. This Swaminarayan Sampradaya temple is one of the six temples built by the sect's founder Swaminarayan.
Mehtab Bagh is a charbagh complex in Agra, North India. It lies north of the Taj Mahal complex and the Agra Fort on the opposite side of the Yamuna River, in the flood plains. The garden complex, square in shape, measures about 300 by 300 metres and is perfectly aligned with the Taj Mahal on the opposite bank. During the rainy season, the ground becomes partially flooded.
Gulab Bagh is the largest garden in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. It is spread over 100 acres (40 ha) of land. The garden has innumerable varieties of roses. Gulab Bagh gets its name from the abundance of rose flowers it has.
"The Wutong Spirits" is a short story by Pu Songling first published in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. It follows locals in Southern China who are terrorised by one of the Wutong Shen, a group of five malevolent spirits. The antagonist reappears in the following Strange Tales story titled "Another Wutong Spirit".