Gardening demands, perhaps more than any other art, peace and leisure, tranquillity and patience, and in every age and country the pioneers and early masters of the craft have been religious teachers and monks. The Hindus and Buddhists, with their wide sympathies and their simple, joyous love of nature, made much use of flowers in their religious ritual. Their monks and missioners travelled far and wide, and with them the Lotus of the Good Law went voyaging into many lands. What the mihrab, Allah as a spirit, invisible, intangible, is to the Mohammedans, the Cross of Redemption to the Christians, the Lotus is to the Buddhist and Hindu. A lotus floating on the cosmic waters is the symbol of the creation of the world. Three species of the flower grow in India: the Nymphaea Lotus, the white Lotus of ancient Egypt; the Nymphaea caerulea, the blue species; and the Nelumbium speciosum, the rose-coloured or sacred Lotus of India, which, Professor Joret believes, only entered Egypt in the times of the Ptolemies. Each colour is sacred to one aspect of the Trinity: the rose-petaled lotus-that of the Dal Lake-is the flower of sunrise, Brahmas prayer; the blue flower is sacred to Vishnu, upholder of the blue noontide universe; the white lotus of evening is the flower of death and resurrection, the emblem of Siva, the Destroyer and Preserver. On a Lotus the Good Law floated to Java, and its flowering can be seen to this day at Borobudur. It was carried south to Cambodia, and Angkor Vat is still the largest temple in the world. Northwards and eastwards the Sacred Lotus journeyed, and the wind and the covering sand followed in its wake; so that the road was well-nigh forgotten when Sir Aurel Stein found the frescoes of Vishnus dark blue flowers, and the little garden buried in the waste. Farther and farther the flower travelled till China and Japan owned its sway, and India, the home of the lotus, the land of Buddha and of Rama, is still the Holy Land of all the Further East.
