गुलाब के फूल -The Rose flower !

Lord Krishna's favorite flower

           The rose flower is loved by God Vishnu. In Hindu mythology, there is a story about the most beautiful flower. Once Brahma and Vishnu debated about the most beautiful flower. While Brahma favored the lotus flower, Vishnu named the rose. When they could not agree on one of them, Vishnu finally took Brahma to his celestial garden and showed him the shrub of rose laden with beautiful roses. Fascinated by this look Brahma accepted Vishnu's logic and both agreed that 'the rose is the most beautiful flower'. Even today the rose is regarded as the "King of flowers". Hindus offer this flower to Krishna who is an avatar of Vishnu. Krishna took the love close to devotion, so this flower is also regarded as a symbol of love. The rosebuds, fully bloomed flowers and rose petals, all could be offered to gods. Even a garland of roses is offered to Krishna.

Pink Rose

                 Roses are found in many colors, mainly white, yellow, red and pink colored. So devotees have choices to offer them according to colors the Gods like. The red colored flower is offered to Goddesses like Kali, Durga and Lakshmi. Since the popular god Hanuman likes red color, he too is worshiped with red roses. Yellow is liked by Vishnu, so Vishnu, Krishna and Ram are offered yellow roses during the worship. White roses are offered to Shiva and Saraswati.  

 

Roses (Buds and flowers)

               Since Gods are offered a number of things in worship and "Pushpa" (flowers) is only one of those things, one other important thing related to flowers is "Gandha" (Perfume). Perfume is extracted from many flowers, and the one extracted from roses is 'rosewater' (Gulab-Jala in Hindi). "Gandha" (Perfume) of rose is offered as 'rosewater' or as 'Attar' (इत्र, अत्तर) in cotton-ball. Its perfume is also used in incense sticks which are burned during worship and "Aarti" to give out the scent of roses. 

                Rose is an ornamental flower. Now we have techniques to grow different varieties and sizes of roses. It was loved by royal families in Rome, Persia and India in medieval times. Mughals were rose fans. They had rose gardens. Nur Jehan is said to have discovered the rose oil while taking a bath in a bath-tub full of rose petals. Even in modern India people love rose gardens and it can be found in botanical gardens and "Rajbhawans" of Indian states and who can forget the "Mughal Garden" of ''Rashtrapati-Bhawan", New Delhi.

Red and Yellow roses

 

                 Rose is known as "Gulaab" in Hindi and Urdu. But it is a bit surprising that it has not got its presence felt strongly in Hindu religious books as the lotus flower has got. Maybe that in ancient times roses found were not so attractive as we see today because we have many new varieties developed now. Hybrid varieties are bigger and attractive but they were not then. Known as "Japa, Jawa and Patal-Pushp" in Sanskrit, it has been mentioned by "Charak" and "Sushrut" (physician and surgeon in Indian medicinal system 'Ayurved' in ancient times) at many places as remedies for acidity, fever and boils. They considered its effect as cooling on the body and good for the stomach. Even today "Gulukand", a preparation of rose petals is eaten in betel leaf (Paan) to keep stomach cool. 

A rosebud opening up

                The perennial plant of rose is a shrub which grows from a meter to 6-7 meters depending upon the variety. It is planted by cutting. For good size of flowers, it has to be cut leaving thick stems one or two feet long only. It needs cow-dung manure and fertilizers too. One has to be careful while touching the plant as it is full of thorns. It grows well in flower beds but one can plant it in even flower pots.

Different products of roses are available at Amazon like rose oil, rose petal powder, rose water, essential oil etc.  

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