The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c6.1

c6.1

ONCE upon a time a Botanist, very learned but with rather defective eyesight, went travelling in far-distant lands. And he came to a great primeval forest with lordly trees, to whose branches many kinds of creepers and curious plants were clinging. Wishing to know what kind of trees these were, he began to gather the leaves and flowers of the creepers and parasites which had intertwined themselves with the branches, without noticing that they were not the real growth of those great forest trees. And he brought them home and dried them carefully, gave them long Latin names, and sent them to other men of science as leaves and flowers of the very rare and curious trees which he had found. So he became famous as a great discoverer.