WATER-LILIES Iol 
dess of beauty and prosperity, protectress of 
womanhood, whose worship guards the house 
from all danger. “Seated on a full-blown 
Lotus, and holding a Lotus in her hand, the 
goddess Sri, radiant with beauty, rose from the 
waves.” The Lotus is the chief ornament of 
the subterranean Eden, Patala, and the holy 
mountain Meru is thought to be shaped like its 
seed-vessel, larger at summit than at base. 
When the heavenly Urvasi fled from her 
earthly spouse, Purtvavas, he found her sport- 
ing with four nymphs of heaven, in a lake beau- 
tified with the Lotus. When the virtuous 
Prahlada was burned at the stake, he cried to 
his cruel father, “The fire burneth me not, 
and all around I behold the face of the sky, 
cool and fragrant with beds of Lotus-flowers !” 
Above all, the graceful history of the transfor- 
mations of. Krishna is everywhere hung with 
these fresh chaplets. Every successive maiden 
whom the deity wooes is Lotus-eyed, Lotus- 
mouthed, or Lotus-cheeked, and the youthful 
hero wears always a Lotus-wreath. Also “the 
clear sky was bright with the autumnal moon, 
and the air fragrant with the perfume of the 
wild water-lily, in whose buds the clustering 
bees were murmuring their song.” 
Elsewhere we find fuller details. “In the 
primordial state of the world, the rudimentary 
