[114] Sir George Birdwood says: “The intimate absorption of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man’s spiritual consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed by the prevailing material ideas of modern society. Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious use, or some religious symbolism. The materials of which different articles are fashioned, their weight, and the colours with which they are painted, are fixed by religious rule. An obscured symbolism of material and colour is to be traced also in the forms of things, even for the most domestic uses. Every detail of Indian decoration, Aryan or Turanian, has a religious meaning, and the arts of India will never be rightly understood until there are brought to their study, a familiar acquaintance with the character and subjects of the religious poetry, national legends, and mythological scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and of which they are the perfected imagery.” See Sir George Birdwood’s “Indian Arts,” part i. p. 2.
[115] The Persian tree of life was not alien to the worship of the Zoroastrian religion of the Sassanides, and is said to have been the origin of the worship of Bacchus. It was introduced by Oriental weavers into Sicilian and Spanish stuffs.
[116] Sir G. Birdwood suggests that the honeysuckle pattern is derived from the Tree of Life, cone, and palm, refashioned and combined with the graceful ingenuity of Greek art, and covering a mixture of sacred traditional emblems.
[117] Haug, in his “Essays on the Sacred Writings of the Parsees” (pp. 132, 239), tells us that these people still hold the homa to be sacred, and from it squeeze a juice used by them in their religious ceremonies.
[118] See Perrot et Chipiez, “Histoire de l’Art,” vol. ii. pp. 260, 267, Pl. xiv.
[120] India, in return, afterwards influenced Persia, the successor of Babylon.
[121] In India, the elephant is a very common element in a pattern; in Egypt, the serpent; in Persia, the lion. In animal patterns, certain emblems were grouped together. The lion and the goose represent strength and prudence; the lion and eagle, strength and dominion; the lion and dove, strength and gentleness. We may see these double emblems on Sicilian textiles.
[122] Chinese art is crowded with symbolisms.
[123] The double-headed eagle was the badge of Saladin, as well as that of the Holy Roman Empire.