any page, and it is a _Sortes Lilianae_. The orb of the
earth is Lotus-shaped, and is upborne by the tusks of Vesava, as if he
had been sporting in a lake where the leaves and blossoms float.
Brahma, first incarnation of Vishnu, creator of the world, was born
from a Lotus; so was Sri or Lakshmu, the Hindoo Venus, goddess of
beauty and prosperity, protectress of womanhood, whose worship guards
the house from all danger. "Seated on a full-blown Lotus, and holding
a Lotus in her hand, the goddess Sri, radiant with beauty, rose from
the waves." The Lotus is the chief ornament of the subterranean Eden,
Patala, and the holy mountain Meru is thought to be shaped like its
seed-vessel, larger at summit than at base. When the heavenly Urvasi
fled from her earthly spouse, Puruvavas, he found her sporting with
four nymphs of heaven, in a lake beautified with the Lotus. When the
virtuous Prahlada was burned at the stake, he cried to his cruel
father, "The fire burneth me not, and all around I behold the face of
the sky, cool and fragrant with beds of Lotus-flowers!" Above all, the
graceful history of the transformations of Krishna is everywhere hung
with these fresh chaplets. Every successive maiden whom the deity
wooes is Lotus-eyed, Lotus-mouthed, or Lotus-cheeked, and the youthful
hero wears always a Lotus-wreath. Also "the clear sky was bright with
the autumnal moon, and the air fragrant with the perfume of the wild
water-lily, in whose buds the clustering bees were murmuring their
song."

Elsewhere we find fuller details. "In the primordial state of the
world, the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed on the
bosom of the Eternal. Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a
Lotus-leaf, floated upon the waters, and all that he was able to
discern with his eight eyes was water and darkness. Amid scenes so
ungenial and dismal, the god sank into a profound reverie, when he
thus soliloquized: 'Who am I? Whence am I?' In this state of
abstraction Brahma continued during the period of a century and a half
of the gods, without apparent benefit or a solution of his inquiries,
a circumstance which caused him great uneasiness of mind." It is a
comfort, however, to know, that subsequently a voice came to him, on
which he rose, "seated himself upon the Lotus in an attitude of
contemplation, and reflected upon the Eternal, who soon appeared to
him in the form of a man with a thousand heads": a questionable
exchange for his Lo