[1] The alchemical works ascribed to Lull, such as _Testamentum_,
_Codicillus seu Testamentum_ and _Experimenta_, are of early although
uncertain date. De Luanco ascribes some of them to a Raimundo de
Tárraga (c. 1370), a converted Jew who studied the occult. Others are
ascribed by Morhof to a Raymundus Lullius Neophytus, who lived about
1440. See ALCHEMY, and also J. Ferguson, _Bibliotheca chemica_
(1906).
LULLABY, a cradle-song, a song sung to children to "lull" them to sleep;
the melody being styled in Fr. _berceuse_ and in Ger. _Wiegenlied_.
"Lull," cf. Swed. _lulla_, Du. _lullen_, &c., is of echoic or
onomatopoeic origin, cf. Lat. _lallare_, to chatter.
LULLY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (c. 1633-1687), Italian composer, was born in
Florence. Through the duc de Guise he entered the services of Madame de
Montpensier as scullery-boy, and with the help of this lady his musical
talents were cultivated. A scurrilous poem on his patroness resulted in
his dismissal. He then studied the theory of music under Métra and
entered the orchestra of the French court, being subsequently appointed
director of music to Louis XIV. and director of the Paris opera. The
influence of his music produced a radical revolution in the style of the
dances of the court itself. Instead of the slow and stately movements
which had prevailed until then, he introduced lively ballets of rapid
rhythm. In December 1661 he was naturalized as a Frenchman, his original
name being Giovanni Battista Lulli. In 1662 he was appointed music
master to the royal family. In 1681 he was made a court secretary to the
king and ennobled. While directing a _Te Deum_ on the 8th of January
1687 with a rather long baton he injured his foot so seriously that a
cancerous growth resulted which caused his death on the 22nd of March.
Having found a congenial poet in Quinault, Lully composed twenty operas,
which met with a most enthusiastic reception. Indeed he has good claim
to be considered the founder of French opera, forsaking the Italian
method of separate recitative and aria for a dramatic consolidation of
the two and a quickened action of the story such as was more congenial
to the taste of the French public. He effected important improvements in
the composition of the orchestra, into which he introduced several new
instruments. Lully enjoyed the friendship of Molière, for some of whose
best plays he composed illustrative music. His _Miserere_, written for
the funeral of the minister Sequier, is a work of genius; and very
remarkable are also his minor sacred compositions. On his death-bed he
wrote _Bisogna morire, peccatore_.
LUMBAGO, a term in medicine applied to a painful aliment affecting the
muscles of the lower part of the back, generally regarded as of
rheumatic origin. An attack of lumbago may occur alone, or be associated
with rheumatism in other parts of the body. It usually comes on by a
seizure, often sudden, of pain in one or both sides of the small of the
back, of a severe cutting or stabbing character, greatly aggravated on
movement of the body, especially in attempting to rise from the
recumbent posture and also in the acts of drawing a deep breath,
coughing or sneezing. So intense is the suffering that it is apt to
suggest the existence of inflammation in some of the neighbouring
internal organs, such as the kidneys, bowels, &c., but the absence of
the symptoms specially characteristic of these latter complaints, or of
any great constitutional disturbance beyond the pain, renders the
diagnosis a matter of no great difficulty. Lumbago seems to be brought
on by exposure to cold and damp, and by the other exciting causes of
rheumatism. Sometimes it follows a strain of the muscles of the loins.
The attack is in general of short duration, but occasionally it
continues for a long time, as a feeling of soreness and stiffness on
movement. The treatment includes that for rheumatic affections in
general (see RHEUMATISM) and the application of local remedies to allay
the pain.
LUMBER, a word now meaning (1) useless discarded furniture or other
rubbish, particularly if of a bulky or heavy character; (2) timber, when
roughly sawn or cut into logs or beams (see TIMBER); (3) as a verb, to
make a loud rumbling noise, to move in a clumsy heavy way, also to
burden with useless material, to encumber. "Lumber" and "lumber-house"
were formerly used for a pawnbroker's shop, being in this sense a
variant of "Lombard," a name familiar throughout Europe for a banker,
money-changer or pawnbroker. This has frequently been taken to be the
origin of the word in sense (1), the reference being to the store of
unredeemed and unsaleable articles accumulating in pawnbrokers' shops.
Skeat adopts this in preference to the connexion with "lumber" in sense
(3), but thinks that the word may have been influenced by both sources
(_Etym. Dict._, 1910). This word is probably of Scandinavian origin, and
is cognate with a Swedish dialect word _lomra_, meaning "to roar," a
frequentative of _ljumma_, "to make a noise." The English word may be of
native origin and merely onomatopoeic. The _New English Dictionary_,
though admitting the probability of the association with "Lombard,"
prefers the second proposed derivation. The application of the word to
timber is of American origin; the _New English Dictionary_ quotes from
_Suffolk_ (Mass.) _Deeds_ of 1662--"Freighted in Boston, with beames ...
boards ... and other lumber."
LUMBINI, the name of the garden or grove in which Gotama, the Buddha,
was born. It is first mentioned in a very ancient Pali ballad preserved
in the _Sutta Nipata_ (verse 583). This is the _Song of Nalaka_ (the
Buddhist Simeon), and the words put in the mouth of the angels who
announce the birth to him are: "The Wisdom-child, that jewel so
precious, that cannot be matched, has been born at Lumbini, in the
Sakiya land, for weal and for joy in the world of men." The commentaries
on the _Jatakas_ (i. 52, 54), and on a parallel passage in the
_Majjhima_ (_J.R.A.S._, 1895, p. 767), tell us that the mother of the
future Buddha was on her way from Kapilavastu (Kapilavatthu), the
capital of the Sakiyas, to her mother's home at Devadaha, the capital of
the adjoining tribe, the Koliyas, to be confined there. Her pains came
upon her on the way, and she turned aside into this grove, which lay not
far from Devadaha, and gave birth there to her son. All later Buddhist
accounts, whether Pali or Sanskrit, repeat the same story.
A collection of legends about Asoka, included in the _Divyavadana_, a
work composed probably in the 1st or 2nd century A.D., tells us (pp.
389, 390) how Asoka, the Buddhist emperor, visited the traditional site
of this grove, under the guidance of Upagupta. This must have been about
248 B.C. Upagupta (Tissa: see PALI) himself also mentions the site in
his _Katha Vatthu_ (p. 559). The Chinese pilgrims, Fa Hien and Hsuan
Tsang, visiting India in the 5th and 7th centuries A.D., were shown the
site; and the latter (ed. Watters, ii. 15-19) mentions that he saw there
an Asoka pillar, with a horse on the top, which had been split, when
Hsuan Tsang saw it, by lightning. This pillar was rediscovered under the
following circumstances.
The existence, a few miles beyond the Nepalese frontier, of an inscribed
pillar had been known for some years when, in 1895, the discovery of
another inscribed pillar at Nigliva, near by, led to the belief that
this other, hitherto neglected, one must also be an Asoka pillar, and
very probably the one mentioned by Hsuan Tsang. At the request of the
Indian government the Nepalese government had the pillar, which was
half-buried, excavated for examination; and Dr Führer, then in the
employ of the Archaeological Survey, arrived soon afterwards at the
spot.
The stone was split into two portions, apparently by lightning, and was
inscribed with Pali characters as used in the time of Asoka. Squeezes of
the inscription were sent to Europe, where various scholars discussed
the meaning, which is as follows: "His Majesty, Piyadassi, came here in
the 21st year of his reign and paid reverence. And on the ground that
the Buddha, the Sakiya sage, was born here, he (the king) had a flawless
stone cut, and put up a pillar. And further, since the Exalted One was
born in it, he reduced taxation in the village of Lumbini, and
established the dues at one-eighth part (of the crop)."
The inscription, having been buried for so many centuries beneath the
soil, is in perfect preservation. The letters, about an inch in height,
have been clearly and deeply cut in the stone. No one of them is
doubtful. But two words are new, and scholars are not agreed in their
interpretation of them. These are the adjective _vigadabhi_ applied to
the stone, and rendered in our translation "flawless"; and secondly, the
last word, rendered in our translation "one-eighth part (of the crop)."
Fortunately these words are of minor importance for the historical value
of this priceless document. The date, the twenty-first year after the
formal coronation of Asoka, would be 248 B.C. The name Piyadassi is the
official epithet always used by Asoka in his inscriptions when speaking
of himself. The inscription confirms in every respect the Buddhist
story, and makes it certain that, at the time when it was put up, the
tradition now handed down in the books was current at the spot. Any
further inference that the birth really took place there is matter of
probability on which opinions will differ.
The grove is situate about 3 m. north of Bhagwanpur, the chief town of a
district of the same name in the extreme south of Nepal, just over the
frontier dividing Nepal from the district of Basti in British territory.
It is now called Rummin-dei, i.e. the shrine of the goddess of Rummin, a
name no doubt derived from the ancient name Lumbini. There is a small
shrine at the spot, containing a bas-relief representing the birth of
the Buddha. But the Buddha is now forgotten there, and the bas-relief is
reverenced only for the figure of the mother, who has been turned into a
tutelary deity of the place. Except so far as the excavation of the
pillar is concerned the site has not been explored, and four small
stupas there (already noticed by Hsuan Tsang) have not been opened.
AUTHORITIES.--_Sutta Nipata_, ed. V. Fansböll (London Pali Text
Society, 1884); _Katha Vatthu_, ed. A. C. Taylor (London, 1897);
_Jataka_, ed. V. Fansböll, vol. i. (London, 1877); _Divyavadana_, ed.
Cowell and Niel (Cambridge, 1886); G. Bühler in the _Proceedings of
the Vienna Academy_ for Jan. 1897, in _Epigraphia Indica_, vol. v.
(London, 1898) and in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1897),
p. 429. See also ibid. (1895), pp. 751 ff.; (1897) pp. 615, 644;
(1898) pp. 199-203; A. Barth in the _Journal des savants_ (Paris,
1897); R. Pischel in _Sitzungsberichte der königl. preussischen
Akademie_ for the 9th July 1903; Babu P. Mukherji, _Report on a Tour
of Exploration of the Antiquities in the Terai_ (Calcutta, 1903); V.
A. Smith in _Indian Antiquary_ (Bombay, 1905). (T. W. R. D.)
LUMP-SUCKER, or LUMP-FISH (_Cyclopterus lumpus_), a marine fish, which
with another British genus (_Liparis_) and a few other genera forms a
small family (Cyclopteridae). Like many littoral fishes of other
families, the lump-suckers have the ventral fins united into a circular
concave disk, which, acting as a sucker, enables them to attach
themselves firmly to rocks or stones. The body (properly so called) is
short and thick, with a thick and scaleless skin, covered with rough
tubercles, the larger of which are arranged in four series along each
side of the body. The first dorsal fin is almost entirely concealed by
the skin, appearing merely as a lump on the back. The lump-sucker
inhabits the coasts of both sides of the North Atlantic; it is not rare
on the British coasts, but becomes more common farther north. It is so
sluggish in its habits that individuals have been caught with sea-weed
growing on their backs. In the spring the fish approaches the shores to
spawn, clearing out a hollow on a stony bottom in which it deposits an
immense quantity of pink-coloured ova. Fishermen assert that the male
watches the spawn until the young are hatched, a statement which
receives confirmation from the fact that the allied gobies, or at least
some of them, take similar care of their progeny. The vernacular name,
"cock and hen paddle," given to the lump-fish on some parts of the
coast, is probably expressive of the difference between the two sexes in
their outward appearance, the male being only half or one-third the size
of the female, and assuming during the spawning season a bright blue
coloration, with red on the lower parts. This fish is generally not
esteemed as food, but Franz Faber (_Fische Islands_, p. 53) states that
the Icelanders consider the flesh of the male as a delicacy.[1] The
bones are so soft, and contain so little inorganic matter, that the old
ichthyologists placed the lump-sucker among the cartilaginous fishes.