The Lotus Quest: In Search of the Sacred FlowerA captivating history of one of the world’s most iconic and mysterious flowers Bewitched by a lotus which flowered from three-thousandyear- old seeds in his English garden, Mark Griffiths set out to track the origins and significance of this sublime plant in this beautifully-illustrated book. The Lotus Quest takes Griffiths from the headquarters of the Linnaean Society in London to a mountain top in northern Japan. As he travels in search of this ancient flower, Griffiths looks at the lotus’s significance in ancient Egypt and India, the plant’s medicinal uses and the inspiration it has provided to Western artists. As he tracks the plant, its story unveils a stunning vision of Japan’s feudal era with visits to shrines, ruins, gardens and wild landscapes as well as meetings with priests and archaeologists, philosophers and anthropologists, gardeners and botanists, poets and artists. He even dines on the lotus in a Tokyo cafe. By the end of Griffiths’ journey, when he reaches the hauntingly beautiful Japanese temple of Chuson-ji, readers will finally understand why the lotus has obsessed people throughout the ages. |
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ancient appears arrived artefacts Bakufu bamboo Bashō bean beautiful became become began blooms botanist bowl Buddha Buddhist buds capital centimetres centre century BC Chinese Chūson-ji clan colour cultivars culture daimyō Deep North early East Edo Period Egypt Egyptian emperor Fenollosa Fujiwara garden germination goddess gold hasu Heian Heian Period Heike Heike clan Hiraizumi horticultural imperial islands Japan Japanese Jōmon Kamakura Kannon Kemigawa Kiyohira Kiyomori Konjiki-dō kyamos Kyoto lake landscape leaves living looked lotus flower lotus leaf Lotus Quest lotus seeds Lotus Sutra Lotus-Land lotuses Masako Matsudaira Matsushima metres Minamoto motifs Museum Nelumbo nucifera Nile Nymphaea Ōga Ōga's Ōshū paint perhaps petals plant poem poet pond Pure Land receptacle rhizomes sacred flower sacred lotus samurai seemed Seiwa Genji Shinobazu-no-ike Shinto shogun shrine species spirit Taeko-san temple Tendai Tokugawa Tokugawa shogun Tokyo translated tree waterlilies Yasuhira Yoko Yoritomo Yoshitsune