FLORAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE EAST. 139 



Gitagovinda — " Madhava binds on her arms, graceful as the stalks of 

 the water-lily [lotos], adorned with hands glowing like the petals of 

 its flowers, a bracelet of sapphires." In the description of Deva, the 

 lover of jSTerbudda, the image occurs in a more beautiful form in 

 allusion to the powdered appearance of the lotos flower — 



" Light graceful from his waist the jammah flows, 

 Thus on the lotus blue the gold dust shows." 



And in another passage, where Nerbudda despatches her slave, Johilla, 

 to observe if the Deva be coming "in due array," she commands her 

 to observe if he be 



" Such as becomes Nerbudda's birth and fame." 



Commanding her to note, 



" If, lion-like, his port he bold and brave ; 

 If the blue lotos blossom on his face ; 

 If his form wear the palm's aspiring grace." 



The history of the lotos, though of highest importance as a key to 

 many of the symbols and ceremonies of antiquity, is surrounded by 

 many difficulties ; yet this difficulty arises not in the fabulous details 

 to which this plant is related, but in the intense reality of its uses and 

 associations. Hindostan is the birth-place of the lotus, as it is also of 

 the chief features in classical tradition and history. The lotos of 

 Indian differs from that of Grecian, and that of Grecian from that of 

 Roman mythology, though the lotos of India is the truly sacred plant 

 from which the others derive both name and literary importance, and 

 sacred investments. In Egypt the plant known as the lotos is the 

 same in kind as that revered in India, and is a species of water-lily, 

 called, in botany, nymiphma. The lotos of the Greek and Roman 

 writers is falsely so called, for, of the true nature of the lotus they 

 were unacquainted. Herodotus, however, who proves correct in all 

 questions of fact, wherein he gives a statement on the authority of 

 his own experience, most correctly describes the lotos of Egypt as a 

 lily of the nymph^a species. Its botanic name is traceable to its 

 place of growth, as it flourishes in bays and inlets of fresh water, and 

 on the broad waters of great rivers, where a rich mud lies near the 

 surface. The Greeks, borrowing their idea of the lotos from Homer, 



