Though early Sanskrit literary texts and inscriptions make frequent enough reference to a variety of types of gardens, we do not possess even a single well-preserved garden-site from the sub- continent before Sultanate times, save the exceptional remains at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. This state of affairs is part of a general paucity of archaeological evidence of palaces and royal architecture in pre-Sultanate India. The Deccan is by and large no exception to this general situation, though the extensive remains at Vijayanagara’s royal centre, whose origins lie at the end of this period, do suggest some possibilities for exploration. The lack of surviving garden-remains, however, hardly closes the matter, for both prescriptive and literary texts make frequent reference to gardens as an important feature of aristocratic life. Gardens, groves, pleasances, manipulated verdurous spaces and other loci amoeni make frequent appearances in medieval court literatures in South Asia. Though literary depictions give these landscapes a highly conventional and idealised aspect, it is not enough to dismiss them as merely rhetorical fictions, as has been claimed for representations of landscapes in the medieval Latinate world. 1 This is because we have numerous manuals on horticulture which would seem to be animated by the same concerns as poets. This article focuses on a small portion of a large prescriptive manual called the Mānasollāsa (‘Delight of the Mind’). Written at the court of the Western Cālukya king Someśvara III (1126–1138 CE), son of the powerful and long-ruling Cālukya monarch Vikramāditya VI (1076–1126), the Mānasollāsa is an unusual document — an extensive verse–compendium of courtly practice and royal life, part encyclopedia, part ‘mirror for princes’. 2 Probably composed by a court poet but attributed to king Someśvara, the Mānasollāsa was influential in the Deccan and beyond. Its verses are repeatedly quoted and/or cited in at least two 14th-century verse anthologies associated with the royal court of Vijayanagara, and the text’s manuscript traditions extended as far as Rajasthan and Gujarat. 3 2 Botanical Technology and Garden Culture in Somes´vara’s Ma – nasolla – sa Daud Ali 1 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 183f. 2 See the recent remarks of Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 184ff. For general studies of the work, see S. S. Misra, Fine Arts and Technical Sciences in Ancient India with Special Reference to Someśvara’s Mānasollāsa, Varanasi: Krishnadas Sanskrit Academy, 1982; P. Arundhati, Royal Life in Mānasollāsa, Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1994; idem, Games and Pastimes in Mānasollāsa, Delhi, P. Arundhati, 2004; and M. N. Joshi, Art and Science in Mānasollāsa, Delhi: New Bharatiya Book Corp., 2003. 3 The Mānasollāsa is cited in the Sūktiratnahāra compiled by Sūrya and the Subhāṣitasudhānidhi assembled by Sāyaṇa. The latter includes a eulogy of Kampaṇṇa, presumably the son of the Sangama king Bukka I (1343–1379 AD). Daud Ali and Emma Flatt, eds. Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial India: Histories from the Deccan. Delhi: Routledge, 2011.