The lotus quest
By: Mark Griffiths
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 2009
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 338
ISBN-13: 9780701181222
Subjects: Travel; Lotus; Religious aspects; Description and travel
Description: "The Lotus is the world's most iconic flower. Galvanised by receiving seeds from a three-thousand-year-old lotus, which flowered without difficulty in an English summer, Mark Griffiths set out to track the path of this sublime plant to its home in the Lotus-Lands of Japan. His quest, from the basement of Burlington House in Piccadilly to a mountain top in northern Japan, involved many adventures and revealed extraordinary new material. The Lotus Quest touches on the lotus in ancient Egypt and India and on the plant's medicinal uses, as well as the inspiration it has provided to Western artists. Most of all, it unveils a stunning vision of Japan's feudal era, as Griffiths visits shrines, ruins, gardens and wild landscapes, and meets priests and archaeologists, philosophers and anthropologists, gardeners and botanists, poets and artists, and even dines on the lotus in a Tokyo cafe. By the end, when we reach the hauntingly beautiful Japanese temple of Chuson-ji, we understand why this flower has been so intimately involved with human history at so many levels, over so vast an expanse of time. Beautifully illustrated, intensely atmospheric and full of suspense, The Lotus Quest shows how the deep crimson of the lotus runs like a tracer dye, tracking the spread, fusion and fission of the world's great civilizations."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: In the strong room; title: The sacred Lotus; title: Metamorphoses transformed; title: Egyptian mysteries; title: What 'beans' means; title: The tree of life; title: The birth of Lakshmi; title: St. Mary's beehives; title: Lotus-land; title: Honourable foreigners; title: The Budda among the Brahmins; title: Doctor Lotus; title: Oga-hasu; title: Lotus-eating; title: Refugium; title: Through looking glass and keyhole; title: A thousand petals, a million prayers; title: Sacred and profane; title: Secret lake; title: Lotus love; title: The mansion of a thousand autumns; title: The hall of the Lotus king; title: The wars of the Lotuses; title: The hill of cranes; title: And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly; title: A dream of islands; title: Lacustral; title: The deep north; title: Bamboo autumn; title: The golden hall; title: Samsara.