Page:Japanese flower arrangement.djvu/27



O those interested in Japanese art there is no better means of following its progress than through the history of Japanese flower arrangement. No other art is so distinctively their own, bearing so few traces of foreign origin.

It is curious that Ike-bana, which is undoubtedly of religious birth and in Japan an outcome of Buddhism, should have left no impression in India, Ceylon, or Korea, where Buddhism was a national creed long before it reached Japan. Although the Japanese like to credit India with the origin of their flower arrangement, in its present form it would not be recognized by the land from [21]