Among Hindus the customs with regard to flowers and trees are very beautiful. With them there is no echo of the long quarrel between man and nature, which lingers in Christian and Moslem minds as a legacy from dark mediaeval times; and Hindus have felt for centuries past things whose existence we, in the West, are only on the verge of realising. India, however, is no exception to the rule that it is women who preserve intact the old religious observances; there, as elsewhere, it is they who keep old memories fragrant-so the Indian garden is above all the purdah womans province. The day begins with the housewifes reverence, the pradakskina about the sacred tulsi bush, which is generally planted in an altar built for the purpose in the centre of the house fore-court. Passing through a Brahmin village in Central India, one is often reminded of some clear-cut, classic bas-relief, by the glimpses caught through open doorways of spotless whitewashed courtyards with their tulsi altars garlanded with flowers, where the women, so stately in their floating veils, go about their work.
