THE KNOP AND FLOWER PATTERN.

We have traced the gradual development of Aryan civilisation, from the Punjab and Valley of Cashmere westward to the British Isles, and the rise of Semitic civilisation in the lands which the to-and-fro trade of Europe and Asia had to cross about half way down the litus Arianum, in consequence of the interposed obstruction of the Isthmus of Suez and Africa, and the peninsula of Arabia. We have seen how this line of coast and overland intercommunication between the East and West Aryans was subject to be constantly interrupted by the incursions of Scyths, Mongols, and other Turkish hordes, whom we may associate with "the Shut up nations" of the Alexander legends; and how it still went on even after the Ottoman Turks had established their dominion between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danube, and was only discarded on the discovery of the ocean way round Africa to the East. This is but 400 years ago, and for 4,000 years before, the road between India and the Mediterranean countries had been through the Tigris and Euphrates valley, and the valley of the Nile. From the time of Alexander, and through all the time of the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ, and under the Roman Empire, until Egypt, Syria, and Persia were conquered by the Saracens, the intercourse between India and Greece through Persia, Assyria, Syria, and Egypt was unbroken and intimate. Although interrupted at first, it again revived under the Saracens, and, under the Ottoman Turks, was only finally suspended after the Portuguese had obtained possession of Ormuz. Even then, the Armenians continued, as they have to the present day, the local intercourse between India and Assyria and Western Asia; going to India and purchasing goods on the spot, and returning with them to Bandar Abbas, Ispahan, Baghdad, Mosul, and Tabriz.

This is quite sufficient to account for the remarkable affinity between Assyrian and Indian decorative art, and the frequent identity of their ornamental details; which, in turn, prove the continuity and intimacy of the commercial intercourse between India and Assyria. Of course the general affinity between Indian and Assyrian art may be in part due to the common Turanian substratum of Indian and Assyrian civilisation. When the Aryas made their way through Cashmere into the Punjab, they found the plains of the Upper Indus already occupied by a Turanian race, which they indeed easily conquered, but which, as the caste regulations of the Code of Menu prove, was far superior to themselves in industrial civilisation. These aborigines already worked in metal and stone, and wove woollen, cotton and linen stuffs, knew how to dye them, and to embellish their buildings with paintings: the descriptions of Megasthenes prove that, even at its highest development, Hindu civilisation was more Turanian than Aryan: and the pre-Aryan Turanian civilisation of India must have been

similar to the pre-Semitic Turanian civilisation of Babylonia, Chaldæa, and Assyria, and probably preceded it. All that is monstrous in the decorative forms of Indian and Assyrian art, all that is obscene in Indian symbolism, is probably derived from common Turanian sources, anterior to direct commercial intercourse between India and Assyria. But, when we find highly artificial and complicated Indian decorative designs identical in form and detail with Assyrian, we feel sure that the one must have been copied from the other, and indeed there can be no doubt that the Indian ornamental designs, applied to and derived directly from sculpture, which are identical with Assyrian, were copied from the monuments of Assyria; Egyptian, of course, from Egypt. We cannot trust alone to the allusions, references, or even descriptions of the Bible, Homer, and the Ramayana, to identify the art manufactures of India with those of Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt; by themselves they indicate generic likeness only; and their specific identity can only be demonstrated by a comparison of the actual remains of ancient art, and of the carved and painted representations on contemporary monuments. But when this identity has been proved from the monuments and other remains, the Bible, Homer, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and Pliny, are invaluable in that they enable us to complete our information on the sure and certain foundation so laid; and, to the picture thus composed of the early civilisation of the world, we are justified in giving colour and motion from the strictly traditional, still living civilisation of India; while it is reasonable to suppose that the Indian was the earliest of these primitive civilisations.

The Bible, and Homer, and the Greek poets generally, are full of idyllic scenes from the life of ancient Greece, Syria, and Egypt, which are still the commonplaces of the daily life of the natives of India, who have lived apart from the corruptions of European civilisation. There are many passages also directly illustrating the handicrafts of the ancients. In Proverbs xxx, we read the praise attributed to Solomon, about B.C. 1015-975, of a good wife : "She "seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. "She is like the merchant's ships, she bringeth her food from afar. "She riseth up while it is yet night, and giveth meat (bread) to her "household *** * She considereth a field and buyeth it; with "the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. * * * She "perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not "out by night. She layeth her hand to the spindle, and her "hands hold the distaff. *** She is not afraid of the snow "for her household; for all her household are clothed with "scarlet. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry: her cloth"ing is silk and purple. Her husband is known in the gates, "when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She maketh "fine linen and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the mer"chant. Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall "rejoice in time to come. Her children rise up and call "her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. *** "Favour is deceitful and beauty vain, but a woman that feareth

***

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"the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her "hands, and let her own work praise her in the gates." And in Exodus xxxvi, v. 30-35, about B.C. 1500, we read of Bezaleel and Aholiab the master craftsmen of the first Temple :-" And Moses "said unto the children of Israel, See the Lord hath called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of "Judah; and He hath filled him with the spirit of God in wis"dom, in understanding, and knowledge, and in all manner of "workmanship; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, "and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones to set "them (jewelry), and in carving of wood to make any manner "of cunning work. And He hath put in his heart that he may "teach, both he and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe "of Dan. Them hath He filled with wisdom of heart to work all manner of work of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, "and of the embroiderer, in blue and in purple, and in scarlet, "and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any "work, and of those that devise cunning work." These passages, and there are numbers of the same description in Homer, and Aristophanes, are sufficient to prove the close affinity of the primitive Hindu civilisation of India, in the simplicity and beauty of its life, in the profound religiousness of its animating spirit, and in the identity many of its industrial arts, with the civilisations of Assyria, Phonicia, and Egypt, and with that of Greece in the heroic age at least ; while even in the midst of the growing corruptions of imperial Rome, we find that Augustus Cæsar brought up the females of his family and household on the antique model, and wore no clothing but such as had been made by their hands.

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The researches of Mr. Fergusson have shewn that stone architecture in India does not begin before the end of the third century B.C. He has also drawn attention to the similarity in ground plan and, in some instances in elevation, of Indian temples to Assyrian and Egyptian. He observes that if the description given by Josephus of the temple at Jerusalem, as rebuilt by Herod, be read with a plan such as that of Tinnevelly, it is impossible to escape the conviction that these coincidences are not wholly accidental. In their grandeur and splendour of detail and in the labour bestowed on them for labour's sake, the resemblance between the temples of Egypt and Madras is most remarkable. Not less startling are the traces of Assyrian art in these temples, and Mr. Fergusson expresses the opinion. that, if we are to trust to tradition or to mythology or to ethnological coincidences, it is rather to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates than to the banks of the Nile that we should look for the incunabula of what are found in Southern India. The jewelry of Madras is distinctly founded on its temple ornaments. Madras silver incense stick holder, exhibited by Mr. FitzGerald formed of an antelope hunted by a dog along a conventional flower stalk, and taken from the sculptures common on all Madras temples, is identical with some of the representations of hunting scenes on the Assyrian monuments given in Rawlinson's

A.

"Ancient Monarchies." In this it is clear that India is the copyist. The knop and flower, or cone and flower, pattern is represented, with local variations, on early Indian monuments in the same form and general style as on the marbles of Assyria, and in the Bharhut sculptures, at least, the lotus is repeatedly represented in the identical half conventional form in which we find it, en silhouette, in the Hieroglyphic paintings of Egypt. Here again India is obviously the copyist.

It is quite possible, however, that some of the very forms in India which can be proved to be copied from Assyrian temples and palaces may have originally been carried into Egypt and Assyria on Indian cotton or woollen fabrics and on jewelry. The knop and flower pattern commonly found on Scinde pottery [Plate I., fig. 7], is identical with the knop and flower pattern on the Koyunjik palace doorway [Plate IV., fig. 1], figured in Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. i., p. 417. In the same volume, at page 493, is a circular breast ornament [Plate IV. fig. 2], on a royal robe, from a sculpture at Nimrud. Here the cone does not alternate with a lotus flower, but with the fan-like head of the Hom. Nor is the cone a lotus bud, but a larger representation of the fruit of the Hom. In a common form of Persian plate [Plate I., fig. 6], which may (chiefly because of the circular shape of the two objects) be compared with this breast ornament, the cone is developed into a form conical in shape, but Hom-like in detail, and the flower is metamorphosed into a strange Chinese style of scroll. That it is the knop and flower pattern is proved beyond dispute by the curved line which unites the base of the knop with the base of the flower, and which is found surviving in ornaments derived from this pattern when almost every other trace of it has disappeared. A modification, in point, of this pattern is repeated on the inner border of the plate. A very beautiful variation of the pattern is one of the commonest seen on Scinde tiles, in which the knop has become the regular Saracenic cone, and the flower not the head of the Hom, or lotus, but a full blown Iris [Plate I., fig. 5]. On Delhi and Cashmere shawl borders [Plate I., fig. 2] the Hom-head-like flower often looks very like the "Shell on Renaissance and mouldings. On these shawl borders the knop and flower are often also combined, the knop becoming the cone or Cypress-like trunk of a tree, the branches of which fan out like the fronds of the Hom. [Plate III., fig. 6]. In some Indian and Persian carpets the knop or cone throws out graceful Hom fronds, one on either side, from the ends of which hangs a large flower, presenting the alternation of a branching cone and flower. Every other branching cone is also, as it were, upside down, so that we get a winding floriated line running in and out between each cone and flower. When the cone is large it is filled in with floral detail, as in Cashmere shawls, the last bright inflorescence of the original hard Egyptian and Assyrian knop and flower pattern. A few engravings are added from Owen Jones' "Grammar of Ornament," to shew the modification of this pattern in Egyptian, Greek, Italian, and Renaissance art. Chapters have been written by puzzle-headed savans to account for these scrolls and for the cone, but surely their origin is so

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plain, that he who runs may read. The Greek "honeysuckle and palmette " scroll is simply the knop and flower, as are the Renaissance shell," and the "tongue and dart," and " egg and tongue patterns in classical mouldings. Long ago Mr. Fergusson pointed out [Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, Vol. I., p. 7] that in the "lat" at Allahabad, the necking immediately below the capital represents with considerable purity the honeysuckle ornament of the Assyrians, which the Greeks borrowed from them with the Ionic order. Its form [Plate v. fig. 6] is derived originally from the Date, Hour, but it really represents, conventionally, a flowering Lotus, as the Bharhut sculptures [Plate v. figs. 4 and 5] enable us to determine. The "reel and bead" pattern running along the lower border of the necking represent the lotus stalks. One Chinese modification of the knop and flower pattern is very significant. The flower is here [Plate IV., fig. 11] a pomegranate, and the cones have become green pomegranate buds; but, instead of being in their original Assyrian places, they are attached to the edge of the vermilion corolla, one on each side, while their old places are filled by a panel formed by the curved lines, which should have joined the flower to the bud, running down between the flowers in parallel lines to the lower edge of the patterned border.

The Assyrian breast ornament figured by Canon Rawlinson proves that the fan-like pattern throwing off its long stalked cones, arranged alternately round the border with the larger cones, is the head of the Hom, represented in the centre, and a multitude of representations of the Hom in Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies and" Herodotus," and on old Saracenic and Sicilian brocades prove that it is the Date tree, and that the long stalked cones flourished out from it, and the large cones which alternate with it round the border of this breast ornament, are great clusters of dates, highly conventionalised. These cones are sometimes replaced by Pomegranates, and, strange to say, the Tree of Life represented as modern Yarkand rugs, is always a Pomegranite tree. The cone figured by Canon Rawlinson, vol. ii., p. 212, as a Pine-apple [Plate III., fig. 3] is clearly a bunch of dates bursting from its spathe. This cone appears [Plate III., fig. 4] on late Italian and early Renaissance brocades, crowned, with flames rising from the crown, and alternating with oak leaves, from which long-stalked acorns are represented issuing forth like the cones from the trunk and head of the Date Hom.

The original Hom was the Sanskrit Soma, Sarcostemma brevistigma, a leafless (the rudimentary leaves are scarcely visible) scandent Asclepiad, with its flowers collected in umbels, fan-like en silhouette, a native of the southern slopes of the Cashmere Valley and Hindu Kush, the fermented juice of which was the first intoxicant of the Aryan race. It is still used as an intoxicant by the Brahmins, and the succulent stalks are chewed by weary wayfarers to allay their thirst. It is admirably represented on the Assyrian sculptures; and in Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. ii., p. 236, it is figured [Plate II., figs. 1, 2] twined very characteristically, although highly conventionally, about the date tree forming the "Tree of Life," Asherah, or "Grove," sacred to Asshur, the