3;>G JOURNAL R, A. S. (CEYLON). [Vol. HI. 



Many writers have translated the "lily" of the Canticles 

 by Violet, Jessamine, and some other flowers, but the late 

 Dr. Royle believed that the lily of the old and that of the 

 New Testament are two distinct plants, "and thinks the 

 former to be the lotus lily of the Nile." (Nymphea lotus.) 

 This would account for the circumstance, that five times in 

 the Canticles, in which the lily is mentioned, reference is 

 made to "feeding among lilies,' 1 as the seeds, roots, and 

 stalks of this flower were common articles of Egyptian diet ; 

 and this author considers, that the frequent reference to this 

 flower in that part of the Scripture, may be owing to the 

 circumstance that the Song of Solomon was written, as has 

 been supposed, on the occasion of his marriage with an 

 Egyptian princess. 



Drs. Hooker and Thomson have lately identified the 

 N. /of us of the Nile with all the varieties indigenous to or 

 growing in India of the red water-lily, and hence the one 

 growing in several parts of Cejdon is identical with the Lotus 

 of the Nile. It is the qijasodd, et-olu of the Sinhalese, and 

 we have white and red varieties of it. It must not, however, 

 be confounded with the sacred bean of India, which grows 

 so profusely in the lake near Colombo, and which threatens 

 to overrun the large sheet of water, as it did the tank between 

 the Racquet Court and the Fort. It is the Nelumbium specio- 

 sum of Botanists. 



It is on this latter plant that, according to ancient Hindoo 

 ideas, the earth was supported ; and it is somewhere recorded 

 that one of the Gods assumed the shape of a boar, and dived 

 down for the space of 3000 year* to discover the source of its 

 root, but in vain. There are beautiful allusions to the Lotus 

 in Sinhalese and Tamil poetry. 



The Lily of the New Testament, and to which Solomon was 

 compared, is supposed to be the Chalcedonian or Scarlet 

 Martagon Lily, formerly called the "Lily of Byzantium," found 

 from the Adriatic to the Levant, and which, with its scarlet 



