and one of their old chronicles tells us how the Ruanwellé dagoba--270
feet high--was festooned with garlands from pedestal to pinnacle, till it
had the appearance of one uniform bouquet. We are further told that in
the fifteenth century a certain king offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet-
smelling flowers at the shrine of the tooth; and, among the regulations of
the temple at Dambedenia in the thirteenth century, one prescribes that
"every day an offering of 100,000 blossoms, and each day a different kind
of flower," should be presented. This is a striking instance, but only one
of many.
"With regard to Greece, there are few of our trees and flowers," writes
Mr. Moncure Conway,[3] "which were not cultivated in the gorgeous
gardens of Epicurus, Pericles, and Pisistratus." Among the flowers
chiefly used for garlands and chaplets in ceremonial rites we find the
rose, violet, anemone, thyme, melilot, hyacinth, crocus, yellow lily, and
yellow flowers generally. Thucydides relates how, in the ninth year of
the Peloponnesian War, the temple of Juno at Argos was burnt down
owing to the priestess Chrysis having set a lighted torch too near the
garlands and then fallen asleep. The garlands caught fire, and the
damage was irremediable before she was conscious of the mischief. The
gigantic scale on which these floral ceremonies were conducted may be
gathered from the fact that in the procession of Europa at Corinth a huge
crown of myrtle, thirty feet in circumference, was borne. At Athens the
myrtle was regarded as the symbol of authority, a wreath of its leaves
having been worn by magistrates. On certain occasions the mitre of the
Jewish high priest was adorned with a chaplet of the blossoms of the
henbane. Of the further use of garlands, we are told that the Japanese
employ them very freely;[4] both men and women wearing chaplets of
fragrant blossoms. A wreath of a fragrant kind of olive is the reward of
literary merit in China. In Northern India the African marigold is held as
a sacred flower; they adorn the trident emblem of Mahádivá with
garlands of it, and both men and women wear chaplets made of its
flowers on his festivals. Throughout Polynesia garlands have been
habitually worn on seasons of "religious solemnity or social rejoicing,"
and in Tonga they were employed as a token of respect. In short, wreaths
seem to have been from a primitive period adopted almost universally in
ceremonial rites, having found equal favour both with civilised as well
as uncivilised communities. It will probably, too, always be so.
Flowers have always held a prominent place in wedding ceremonies,
and at the present day are everywhere extensively used. Indeed, it
would be no easy task to exhaust the list of flowers which have entered
into the marriage customs of different countries, not to mention the
many bridal emblems of which they have been made symbolical. As far
back as the time of Juno, we read, according to Homer's graphic account,
how:--
backadmin
(backadmin)
#1