FLORAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE EAST. 205 
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 birthplace 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 import¬ 
ance, 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, 
nymphaa* 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 
is generally correct in questions of fact where he gives 
a statement on the authority of his own experience, most 
correctly describes the lotos of Egypt as a lily of the 
nymphsea 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, describe 
it as the produce of a shrub. The lotos of Homer, 
however, is distinct from that of ancient India and 
Egypt, and it is slightly probable that, when Homer 
sang, it w^as known in Greece only by name. It could 
not have been the Egyptian water-lily which formed the 
bed of Jupiter and Juno, according to Homer; nor 
