here the River Maeander is symbolized by the angular key
pattern. Appendix, No. 1.

[109] "(Euripides _loquitur_) Not horse-cocks, nor yet
goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets"
(Aristophanes, "The Frogs," v. 939-944). The Persian
carpets, which are the legitimate descendants of
Babylonian art, are curiously fragmentary. In a modern
design are to be seen birds, indicated by a head, bill,
and eyes; little coffee-pots, and flowers broken off at
the stalks, and small quadrupeds without any particular
form; also the prehistoric cross, the Tau, and bits of
broken-up wave and key patterns. All these, repeated
into a pattern, remind us of scraps in a kaleidoscope,
thrown together accidentally, or else taken up by chance
where history and art have dropped them.

[110] "Soma" or "Homa" ("Sarcostemma Viminale vel
Brevistigma"), from Cashmere and the Hindu Cush, still
used by the Brahmins, and the juice of which was the
first intoxicant of the human race. See Birdwood's
"Indian Art," vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.

[111] "The Hom, the sacred Persian tree, is constantly
placed between two animals, chained to it." See Pl. 23,
Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[112] The Hom or Homa, the sacred tree of Assyrian and
Persian sculpture and textiles, is accounted for as a
pattern by Dr. Rock, who says: "From the earliest
antiquity a tradition came down through middle Asia, of
some holy tree, perhaps the tree of life spoken of as
growing in Paradise." It is always represented as
something like a shrub, and is a conventional portrait
of a palm; but Rock says it has every look of having
belonged to the family of the Asclepiadeae. For its last
transformation into a vine, see Pl. 24.

[113] Rock's "Introduction," p. cxxxi.

[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