Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/31



Water vessels or lotas, dishes, bowls, candlesticks, images of the gods, temple bells, sacrificial spoons, censers, and other sacred and domestic utensils in brass and copper are made all over India, and of the same patterns as we find in representations of them on the oldest Buddhist sculptures and cave-paintings. These metal vessels in a native Indian household supply the place of porcelain, glass and silver plate in a European family. Hindus use brass vessels, and Mahommedans copper, except for drinking-cups, which are generally of silver. The lota is the glo- bular ewer, sometimes melon-shaped, flattened from top to bottom and very rarely from side to side, universally used in ceremonial and other ablutions, and its name is the same word as lotus, the water-lily, and comes from the same root as the Latin lotus , washed, and the English, lotion, a wash. It is found plain, chased, graven, and encrusted. The most interesting of all known lotas is one in the India Museum [Plate 12] dis- covered by Major Hay, in 1857, at Kundlah in Kulu, where a landslip had exposed the ancient Buddhist cell in which this lota had been lying buried for 1,500 years ; for it is attributed by Oriental scholars to the date a.d. 200-300. It is exactly of the shape now made, and is enchased all round with a representation of Gautama Buddha, as Prince Siddhartha, before his conversion, going on some high procession. An officer of state, on an elephant, goes before ; the minstrels, two damsels, one playing on