Palais et Jardins de Cha Susa Prince de Ragi Mohol

Circa 1685

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 7.75 x 5.5 in (20 x 14 cm)
Sheet size: 9.75 x 7.25 in (25 x 18.5 cm)

Imperial India Observed — Mughal Palace Gardens and and Urban Plan from Mallet’s Description de l’Univers

This rare double-view engraving of Monghyr (modern Munger), published in Alain Manesson Mallet’s Description de l’Univers, offers a layered European visualization of Mughal India that merges architecture, urban planning, and imperial geography within a single plate. Conceived not as a measured survey but as a didactic synthesis, the image exemplifies how late seventeenth-century Europe sought to comprehend the political and spatial organisation of the Mughal world.

The upper composition, Palais et Jardins de Cha Susa Prince de Ragi Mohol, presents a palace complex set directly upon the banks of the Ganges. The French title “Cha-Susa” represents an early European transliteration of Shah Shuja, the second son of Shah Jahan and a prominent imperial prince in the mid-seventeenth century — a reading supported by contemporary route narratives and Mughal chronicles of Bengal and Bihar. Its symmetrical gardens, rectilinear enclosures, and axial pathways reflect a European interpretive lens applied to Mughal courtly architecture—one that prioritised order, balance, and legibility over ethnographic specificity. Though not a measured record of a known site, the depiction conveys an impression of princely authority articulated through controlled landscape design and riverine access, reinforcing the Ganges’ role as both a symbolic and logistical artery of empire.

The lower view, Plan de la Ville de Mongher, shifts perspective from palace to city. Here, Monghyr appears as a fortified urban settlement, its walls, streets, and riverfront clearly delineated. Historically recognised as a strategic military and administrative centre in eastern India, Monghyr’s prominence is underscored by its placement along the Ganges, a feature emphasised repeatedly in European representations of Mughal power. The juxtaposition of palace and city within a single sheet reflects Mallet’s broader project: to render distant political systems intelligible through visual hierarchy and spatial clarity.

Produced during the reign of Louis XIV, Description de l’Univers was among the most influential geographical compendia of its era. As Ingénieur du Roi, Alain Manesson Mallet combined military training with cartographic compilation, synthesising travellers’ reports, earlier maps, and textual sources into engravings intended for wide circulation. Plates such as this one played a formative role in shaping European perceptions of India—not as an abstract territory, but as a structured imperial landscape defined by cities, courts, rivers, and governance.

Within the canon of early European representations of Mughal India, this engraving occupies a critical position: neither purely decorative nor strictly scientific, it stands as a cultural artefact of knowledge-making, revealing as much about European intellectual frameworks as about the subcontinent it depicts.

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