The Indian Buddhist garden, forgotten in the land of its origin, still survives further East, although so transformed and tinged by the genius of another climate and another people, that the garden history of the plum and cherry tree, the wisteria and morning glory, the lotus and Japanese iris, is often misunderstood and overlooked. For all that, the Japanese garden, the most intimate and charming expression of Japanese nationality, came like so many of their arts from India through China and Korea. And from the early temple gardens made by the Buddhist monks and pilgrims, the whole beautiful and elaborate system of Japanese garden craft has gradually been built up.
The Indian Lotus-bearers reached China both through Turkestan and by the southern route through Burmah and Cambodia, and 'Coal Hill,' near the Tatar city in Peking, is a relic of the Pleasure Hill idea. The style is supposed to have been introduced into Japan in the sixth century by one Yohan Koan Han, who constructed great mounds, some of them a hundred feet high or more, and brought water in conduits to form lakes and ponds. These hills and rockeries were planted after the Indian fashion with flowering trees and shrubs. True, before this date the Japanese had a garden style called 'Imperial Hall,' from a famous royal garden, a quadrangle enclosed on three sides by palace buildings, but not much is known of the details of the style except that there was an irregular lake with an island and a little bridge connecting it with the shore. But the Plum and Orange tree right and left of the entrance to the palace are strangely reminiscent of the ancient Hindu marriage of the fruit trees by the garden well. The flowers show still more strangely the persistence of the old ideas, for in a land of wonderful wild flowers half the gardens in Japan are green gardens, and, except for the blossoming trees and shrubs, the lotus in the pond, the iris fringing its margin, and the wisteria on the trellis overhead, all the garden flowers are in pots. The old traditional flowers seem the only ones to take root in the garden soil. Peonies, lilies, asters, and other more recently introduced flowers are all planted in pots. Even the national chrysanthemum, whose curving petals represent the wheel of the Buddhist Law and the rays of the rising sun, is not grown in the ground, but is invariably set out in blue and white or pale green flower pots.
[Note: Lotus-Bearer, or Padmapani, is a description of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion. A Bodhisattva is a person who could enter Nirvana but has decided to remain on earth to help others]
