ON ORIENTAL CARPETS
ARTICLE IV.
❧ THE LOTUS AND THE TREE OF LIFE ❧
THAT the art of weaving textile fabrics was known and practised among the earliest civilized nations of the world appears to be beyond dispute. Primarily no doubt the need for some form of clothing (slight probably in a hot country) and for floor coverings which should afford a protection against scorpions and other venomous creatures and for sleeping mats called forth the production of cloths woven from reeds and grasses and from the fibres of large-leaved plants. Soon, however, the possibility of using the wool of goats and sheep and camels must have impressed itself on the minds of primitive weavers, and from this to the production of textiles proper was but a short and easy step in natural development. It is probable that a considerable time may have elapsed between the first production of woven fabrics and the time when the artistic need became felt for enhancing their appearance by the employment of colouring matters. The mind of the primitive manufacturer became no doubt gradually attuned to this necessity by the slow development of a natural desire to brighten the gloomy aspect of his darkened homes. (In this regard it will be borne in mind that an essential feature of all oriental interiors has ever been the exclusion, so far as may be, of the scorching glare of the sun’s rays.) The primitive houses of the earliest settled peoples were doubtless built of mud, as are those of their descendants to-day, and it would be difficult to imagine anything less attractive than the interior of an Upper Egypt, or Nubian or Mesopotamian house (which is to-day the exact counterpart of those we find on the paintings and bas-reliefs which have come down to us from the oldest times), with mud walls, mud floor, mud roof, all of a uniform dingy brown, and without furniture of any kind to relieve the eye. It is probable that the early weaver was in the habit of dyeing his woven products in some uniform colour for a considerable time before it occurred to him that richer effects might be produced by colouring his yarns in different tints previous to their employment on the loom. Having got so far it did not take very long before his manual dexterity had so far attained the level of his artistic aspirations as to impel him to seek models for the complicated designs he sought to introduce into his work. For these models, as for their colouring, he naturally turned to those forms which were constantly before his eyes in everyday life.
And among these most prominent no doubt was the lotus, which in one form or the other is invariably found to hold a prominent place in the centre or border of an oriental carpet. Probably the artistic weaver copied the numerous forms of the lotus long before he attached any symbolism to the plant itself, and merely because the flowing lines and sweeping curves of the plant appealed to his eye. Other tree and plant forms there were no doubt that commended themselves to him, and these, too, he sought to introduce into his designs; but the predominance of the lotus over all other forms early asserted itself and has maintained its position ever since. At what period the profound and mystic symbolism of the lotus became generally recognized among the peoples to whom it was a familiar object must ever remain a matter of controversy and of speculation. Professor Goodyear, who has written an elaborate treatise on ‘The Grammar of the Lotus,’ regards this form of classic and ancient ornamentation as a development of sun worship. His theory briefly deals with the development of the sun symbols from the lotus by a series of complicated and ingenious evolutions. The lotus, according to him, was a fetish of immemorial antiquity, which has been worshipped in many countries from Japan to Gibraltar. He claims that it is the symbol of life, immortality, renaissance, resurrection and fecundity. He describes the three forms of lotus: the blue and the white, which differ but little save in colour, and the rose lotus, which is really not a lotus at all botanically speaking, and is not a native of Egypt but of India.
This lotus (the rose) is still cultivated in China as a food plant, and it is believed that it was brought to Egypt from India by Alexander the Great for that purpose; but that it was regarded by the Egyptians as a national symbol there is, in the opinion of Professor Goodyear, no sufficient evidence to show. ¶That the lotus was early regarded as a religious symbol in India and China is generally held. It is, of course, the sacred flower of the Buddhists. ‘When Buddha was born,’ says Moor in his ‘Hindu Pantheon,’ ‘a lotus bloomed where he first touched the ground; he stepped seven steps northward, and a lotus marked each foot-fall.’ The Buddhist prayer often quoted begins: ‘O God, the jewel of the lotus,’ or ‘O holy jewel in the lotus, be it so.’ In the Hindu theogony the lotus floating on the water is an emblem of the world, and the whole plant of the earth and its two principles of fecundation. Edwin Arnold, in ‘The Light of Asia,’ says: ‘Aum Mani pâdme hûm,’ of which the literal translation is, ‘All hail to the jewel in the flower of the lotus.’ He continues: ‘The sunrise comes,’ ‘The dew-drop slips,’ ‘Into the shining sea.’ ¶ Brahmans consider the sun to be the emblem or image of their great deities, jointly or individually, i.e. Brahma the supreme one, who alone exists really and absolutely. The legend goes that Brahma, according to a generally received system founded on a doctrine of the Vaishnavas, sprang on a lotus from the navel of Vishnu, who is the personification of the sun, to bid all worlds exist. ¶ Professor Goodyear maintains that the symbolism of the lotus, which is referred most frequently by modern writers to its phallic and generative or to its funereal and mortuary bearings, is based upon well-proved but not generally recognized solar significance. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by an appeal to the acknowledged fact that the Egyptian idea of the resurrection and of a future life was connected with the worship of the creative and reproductive forces of nature, which were conceived and worshipped as solar in character and origin. It is the supposed passage of the sun at night through a lower world during its return to the dawn of a following day which makes Osiris (the sun at night) the god of the lower world and of the dead, for which reason he is represented as a mummy. As the god of resurrection, the special and emphatic character of Osiris, he represents the creative power of the sun god; and thus the lotus, as the attribute of Osiris, is at once a symbol of the sun of resurrection, and of creative force and power.
A TABRIZ CARPET, WITH A DEEP RED FIELD AND BLUE BORDER, THE MEDALLION ILLUSTRATING THE TREE OF LIFE AND LOTUS FLOWER
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MESSRS. GILLOW