ABSTRACT
The blossom itself is regarded as the flower of summer and fruitfulness. Chinese artists are very fond of painting a series of pictures denoting the four seasons, winter being represented by the prunus, spring the peony, and autumn the chrysanthemum. The lotus appears also in the designs for carpets, architecture and embroidery often highly conventionalised. The jewel in the lotus flower, so often used in Lamaistic Buddhism as the Sanskrit invocation "Om Mani Padme Hum", is the drop of dew collected by the leaf which flashes in the morning sun like a diamond.
