Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/463

Rh fore they reached India, which with its brilliant yellow as of the rising sun has been used by the men of many lands from the earliest ages. It was perhaps connected with sun-worship, as turmeric appears to be to-day in India. In Persia saffron possessed magic qualities and even in the medieval Europe saffron was worn in little bags and constantly used in the preparation of food. The Soma, it may be added, is of a golden color and is still used in Persia as a yellow dye. The Buddhists, again, hold yellow in highest honor, and the sacred flower of the Buddhists is yellow. In Persia, yellow is a favorite color, as it was with the Hebrews, for in the Song of Songs the bride is compared to saffron. In China, yellow is the fortunate color, though largely sharing this virtue with green and red. In the Malay states, white is holiest of all and is used to conciliate demons, but after white yellow is by far the most sacred color. According to Malay annals, a certain sultan prohibited the wearing of yellow garments in public, and even the use of yellow handkerchiefs or curtains, because yellow is too sacred for ordinary mortals, and ever since yellow has been the royal color in all Malay states. It may be added that on the western borders of Asia, in ancient Egypt, although yellow was not the supreme color, it was still held in high honor; the favorite combination to express splendor was gold and lazuli.

Even in classic Europe, at the highest moments of the civilization we inherit to-day, yellow, though not occupying the sacred position it has always held in Asia, was yet a preferred color, always mentioned with an affective tone of delight. In both Greece and Rome—somewhat curiously, in view of what we have had to note of the psychic reaction to it in modern times—though red was the most sacred color, yellow was the color for the festival garments of women and children, and was especially worn, Pliny states, by women at marriage. It was also the color of the priests of Cybele. Eed and yellow, according to the same author, were the colors that dominated in ancient pictures. The four primary colors, according to Empedocles, are white, black, red and yellow, exactly the four colors which Nietzsche, discussing the philology of classic color-words, states that the Greek world seems to have been made of. Yellow was with red the favorite color of Homer, and Latin poetry is specially rich in synonyms for yellow.

What is the meaning of this clash of feeling between the modern European world, on the one side, and, on the other, the ancient classic world and the universal sentiments of Asia? It is not obvious why we should have ceased to delight in a color that to the men of another