lotus-eaters or Lotophagi, a fabulous people who occupied the north coast of Africa and lived on the lotus, which brought forgetfulness and happy indolence. They appear in the Odyssey. When Odysseus landed among them, some of his men ate the food. They forgot their friends and home and had to be dragged back to the ships. "The Lotus-Eaters" by Tennyson has become a classic of English poetry.

lotus: see water lily.

White Lotus Rebellion, Chinese anti-Manchu uprising that occurred during the Ch'ing dynasty. It broke out (1796) among impoverished settlers in the mountainous region that separates Sichuan prov. from Hubei and Shaanxi provs. It apparently began as a tax protest led by the White Lotus Society, a secret religious society that forecast the advent of the Buddha, advocated restoration of the native Chinese Ming dynasty, and promised personal salvation to its followers. At first the Ch'ing administration, under the control of Ho-shen, sent inadequate and inefficient imperial forces to suppress the ill-organized rebels. On assuming effective power in 1799, however, Emperor Chia Ch'ing (reigned 1796-1820) overthrew the Ho-shen clique and gave support to the efforts of the more vigorous Manchu commanders as a way of restoring discipline and morale. A systematic program of pacification followed in which the populace was resettled in hundreds of stockaded villages and organized into militia. In its last stage, the Ch'ing suppression policy combined pursuit and extermination of rebel guerrilla bands with a program of amnesty for deserters. Although the Manchu finally crushed (1804) the rebellion, the myth of the military invincibility of the Manchu was shattered, perhaps contributing to the greater frequency of rebellions in the 19th cent.

Becker, Carl Lotus, 1873-1945, American historian, b. Blackhawk co., Iowa. He taught history at Dartmouth College (1901-2), at the Univ. of Kansas (1902-16), and at Cornell Univ. (1917-41). After retirement he was professor emeritus and university historian at Cornell. Among his early works were monographs such as his History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (1909), but his real forte was the analysis of thought and philosophy in action, exemplified by his studies on the American Revolutionary period (e.g., The Declaration of Independence, 1922, repr. 1942) and in the broader study, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932). His deep concern with the use of history for the improvement of international relations and the quality of life was shown in his How New Will the Better World Be? (1944). His works are remarkable as much for the quiet originality of his thought as for the purity and lucidity of his impeccable literary style.

Any of several different plants whose flowers have been given symbolic meaning by many cultures. The lotus of the Greeks is Ziziphus lotus (family Rhamnaceae), a shrub native to southern Europe; wine made from its fruit was thought to produce contentment and forgetfulness. The Egyptian lotus is a white water lily (Nymphaea lotus). The sacred lotus of the Hindus is an aquatic plant (Nelumbo nucifera) with white or delicate pink flowers; the lotus of eastern North America is Nelumbo pentapetala, a similar plant with yellow blossoms. Lotus is also a genus of the pea family (see legume), containing about 100 species found in temperate regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America; the 20 or more species in North America are grazed by animals. The lotus is a common ornament in architecture, and since ancient times it has symbolized fertility, purity, sexuality, birth, and rebirth of the dead.

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Chinese Buddhist millenarian movement that was often persecuted because of its association with rebellion. The movement had roots in 4th-century worship of the Buddha Amitabha, whose devotional cult inspired Mao Ziyuan to form the White Lotus Society, a pious vegetarian group of monks and laity. By the 14th century it had developed into a millenarian sect that combined Maitreyan and Manichaean beliefs and was active in rebellions at the end of the Yuan dynasty. The society became most prominent through its role in the White Lotus Rebellion (1786–1804), a large-scale uprising in central China that contributed to the fall of the Qing dynasty. It was eventually put down by peasants organized into local militia defense corps. Later Chinese governments came to use the term White Lotus for all illegal millenarian groups. Some observers saw the Nian Rebellion of 1852 as well as the secret society behind the Boxer Rebellion as new manifestations of the White Lotus Society.

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