FLORAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE EAST. 145 



son of Maya, who with a bow of flowers strung with stinging bees, 

 has shot an arrow, tipped with an amra blossom at his heart. 



" Quick from his bee-strung bow an arrow flew, 

 Its point an amra fresh with morning dew." * 



Neither a blind god nor a fat baby is this Cupid of the oriental fiction. 

 His mother, Maya, is imaginative power, since, according to some 

 Hindoo philosophers, whatever exists, exists only in a system of per- 

 ception, wholly dependent on the imagination, and hence all things 

 are but illusions of the mind. "Except the first cause (Brahme), 

 whatever may appear, or may not appear in the mind, know that 

 it is the mind's Maya, or delusion, as light and darkness." f The 

 warm impulse of the brain being the parent of love, Cama himself, 

 though sailing on the wings of the gay lory (or parrot), attended by 

 his dancing nymphs, is a spiritual essence only, for Siva, writhing 

 under the smart of his arrow, flung at him a flame of fire, and con- 

 sumed his body, so sublimating that which is only beautiful when of 

 the spirit. 



Neither do flowers fail this son of Mizraim, when he subdues the 

 raging flame into a genial and cheering warmth, and makes it burn as 

 an oblation upon the altar of a home. His hand is bound to that of his 

 bride by a wisp of the sacred cusa grass, by a priest whose vestments 

 are wrought of the sara or jungle plant, J arranged in triple cords ac- 

 cording to the precepts of the holy Sastras. § If in his lifetime he 

 perform good works, and endear himself to his fellow men, flowers are 

 strewn in his path and honours heaped upon him — not as in the 

 West, when death has sealed up the fountains of gratitude — but while 

 living, that the heart, while it beats, may know it beats not in vain. ^ 

 And when after a life sanctified in act and thought by the poetic 

 breath and symbolic beauty of flowers, death at last imprints an icy 

 kiss upon him, he goes \ip to the sweet gardens of Nandana to revel 

 amongst the spiritual flowers or joys which blossom there. 



* Metamorphosis of Sona, p. 6. 

 t Bhagavata Purana, 

 X Saccharum spartaneum of Linnaeus. 

 § Menu, ii, ch. 2, v. 42, 43. 

 f According to the Paranas, flower-strewing is an honour due to the bene- 

 factors of the people. 



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