Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/113

Rh All through the Malay world, however, it is especially the flower of the dead, associated everywhere with funeral rites and graves, as conventional an expression or accompaniment of grief, death, and burial as the cypress and the weeping willow. For this reason one rarely sees it used as an ornamental tree or hedge, even in a European's garden or pleasure-grounds, and its presence in hedges or copses indicates that there are graves, or one of Islam's little open-timbered temples of the dead, within reach of its entrancing fragrance. Our Malay servant would never accept our name of "frangipani" when told to spread out or stir the petals we tried to dry in the sun. He stoically repeated the native "sumboja" after me each time, very rightly resenting the baptism in honor of an Italian marquis, who only compounded an essence imitating the perfume of the West Indian red jasmine, which breathes a little of the cloying sweetness of the peerless sumboja. After but a few trials of its syllables, "sumboja" soon expressed to me more of the fragrance, the sentiment and spirit, of the lovely death-flower than ever could the word "frangipani." Chinese Buddhists seem not to have any traditions or associations with the Bo-flower, as in South China, where the tree is grown in gardens, it is only the kai tan fa, or "egg-flower," those hideously matter-of-fact people noting only the resemblance of the lovely petals to the contrasting yolk and albumen of a hard-boiled egg.