ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a small portion of a large prescriptive manual called the Manasollasa. It examines the knowledge on gardens in the Manasollasa against a wider discursive context — namely, the variety of knowledges on horticulture and agriculture in early India. Written at the court of the Western Calukya king Somesvara III the Manasollasa is an unusual document — an extensive verse–compendium of courtly practice and royal life, part encyclopedia, part ‘mirror for princes’. The Manasollasa deals with what it deems to be fabulous plants, causing ‘wonder in the hearts of all’, what the Sarngadharapaddhati later calls ‘miraculous techniques’. In the Manasollasa these marvels include the production of special botanical ‘miscegenations’ like the growth of grapes from mango trees or aubergines from pumpkin plants, but also many techniques continuous with its other advice — to bring about unusual, unseasonal or generally unexpected results from various types of garden plants.
