Chapter 16

7. Naga and Takshak are Sanskrit names for a snake or serpent, the emblem of Budha or Mercury. The Naga race, so well known to India, the Takshaks or Takiuks of Scythia, invaded India about six centuries before Christ.

8. De Guignes,Sur les Dynasties des Huns, vol. i. p. 7.

9. Nearly the calculated period from the Puranas.

10.Tauth, ‘father’ in Sanskrit [? tāta].Qu.Teuths, and Toth, the Mercury of Egypt?

11. [The author seems to confuse Budha (Mercury) with Gautama Buddha, the teacher. Buddhism arose in India, not in Central Asia, and Jainism was not a milder form of it, but an independent, and probably earlier, religion.]

12. Diodorus Siculus book ii.

13. The Arvarma of the Puranas; the Jaxartes or Sihun. The Puranas thus describe Sakadwipa or Scythia. Diodorus (lib. ii.) makes the Hemodus the boundary between Saka-Scythia and India Proper.

14. Ila, the mother of the Lunar race, is the earth personified. Ertha of the Saxons; ἔρα of the Greeks;ardin Hebrew [?].

15. Scythes, fromSakatai, ‘Sakadwipa,’ andis, ‘Lord’: Lord of Sakatai, or Scythia [?].

16.Qu.Whether the Scythic Pali may not be the shepherd invaders of Egypt [?]. The Pali character yet exists, and appears the same as ancient fragments of the Buddha inscriptions in my possession: many letters assimilate with the Coptic.

17. The three great branches of the Indu (Lunar) Aswa bore the epithet ofMidia(pronouncedMede), viz. Urumidha, Ajamidha, and Dvimidha.Qu.The Aswa invaders of Assyria and Media, the sons of Bajaswa, expressly stated to have multiplied in the countries west of the Indus, emigrating from their paternal seats in Panchalaka? [Mīdhameans ‘pouring out seed, prolific,’ and has no connexion with Mede, the Madai of Genesis x. 2; the Assyrian Mada.]

18. Sun-worshippers, the Suryavansa.

19. Strabo lib. xi. p. 511.

20. Dahya (one of the thirty-six tribes), now extinct.

21. The Asii and Tochari, the Aswa and Takshak, or Turushka races, of the Puranas, of Sakadwipa [?].“C’est vraisemblablement d’après le nom de Tachari, que M. D’Anville aura cru devoir placer les tribus ainsi dénommées dans le territoire qui s’appelle aujourdhui Tokarist’han, situé, dit ce grand géographe, entre les montagnes et le Gihon ou Amou” (Note 3, liv. xi. p. 254, Strabon).

22. Once more I may stateSakhain Sanskrit has the aspirate: literally, the ‘branches’ or ‘races.’ [SakaandSākhahave no connexion; see Smith,EHI, 226.]

23.“La Sacasene étoit une contrée de l’Arménie sur les confins de l’Albanie ou du Shirvan” (Note 4, tome i. p. 191, Strabon).“The Sacasenae were the ancestors of the Saxons” (Turner’sHistory of the Anglo-Saxons).

24. Herodotus (iv. 12) says: “The Cimmerians, expelled by the Massagetae, migrated to the Crimea.” Here were the Thyssagetae, or western Getae [the lesser Getae, Herodotus iv. 22]; and thence both the Getae and Cimbri found their way to the Baltic. Rubruquis the Jesuit, describing the monuments of the Comani in the Dasht-i Kipchak, whence these tribes, says: “Their monuments and circles of stones are like our Celtic or Druidical remains” (Bell’sCollection). The Khumān are a branch of the Kāthi tribe of Saurashtra, whose paliyas, or funeral monumental pillars, are seen in groups at every town and village. The Chatti were one of the early German tribes. [Needless to say, the German Chatti had no connexion with the Kāthi of Gujarāt.]

25. [The reference, again, is to the Saisunāga dynasty, p. 64 above.]

26. Asi was the term applied to the Getes, Yeuts, or Juts, when they invaded Scandinavia and founded Yeutland or Jutland (see ‘Edda,’ Mallet’s Introduction).

27. Mercury and earth.

28. Pinkerton,On the Goths, vol. ii. p. 94. [All this is obsolete.]

29. Camari was one of the eight sons of Japhet, says Abulghazi: whence the Camari, Cimmerii, or Cimbri. Kamari is one of the tribes of Saurashtra. [Kymry = fellow-countrymen (Rhys,Celtic Britain, 116).]

30. The Suiones, Suevi, or Su. Now the Su, Yueh-chi, or Yuti, are Getes, according to De Guignes. Marco Polo calls Cashgar, where he was in the sixth century, the birthplace of the Swedes; and De la Croix adds, that in 1691 Sparvenfeldt, the Swedish ambassador at Paris, told him he had read in Swedish chronicles that Cashgar was their country. When the Huns were chased from the north of China, the greater part retired into the southern countries adjoining Europe. The rest passed directly to the Oxus and Jaxartes; thence they spread to the Caspian and Persian frontiers. In Mawaru-l-nahr (Transoxiana) they mixed with the Su, the Yueh-chi, or Getes, who were particularly powerful, and extended into Europe. One would be tempted to regard them as the ancestors of those Getes who were known in Europe. Some bands of Su might equally pass into the north of Europe, known as the Suevi. [The meaning of Suevi is uncertain, but the word has no connexion with that of any Central Asian tribe.]

31. Mr. Pinkerton’s research had discovered Sakatai, though he does not give his authority (D’Anville) for the Sakadwipa of the Puranas! “Sakitai, a region at the fountains of the Oxus and Jaxartes, styled Sakita from the Sacae” (D’Anville,Anc. Geog.). The Yadus of Jaisalmer, who ruled Zabulistan and founded Ghazni, claim the Chagatais as of their own Indu stock: a claim which, without deep reflection, appeared inadmissible; but which I now deem worthy of credit.

32. Chagatai, or Sakatai, the Sakadwipa of the Puranas (corrupted by the Greeks to Scythia), “whose inhabitants worship the sun and whence is the river Arvarma.” [For the Chagatai Mongols see Elias-Ross,History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, Introd. 28 ff.]

33. Utrar, probably the Uttarakuru of ancient geography: the uttara (northern) kuru (race); a branch of Indu stock.

34. Jadu ka dang, the Joudes of Rennell’s map; the Yadu hills high up in the Panjab, where a colony of the Yadu race dwelt when expelled Saurashtra. [The Salt Range in the Jhelum, Shāhpur, and Miānwāli districts of the Panjāb, was known to ancient historians as Koh-i-Jūd, or ‘the hills of Jūd,’ the name being applied by the Muhammadans to this range on account of its resemblance to Mount Al-Jūdi, or Ararat. The author constantly refers to it, and suggests that the name was connected with the Indian Yadu, or Yādava tribe (IGI, xxi. 412; Abu-l Fazl,Akbarnāma, i. 237; Elliot-Dowson, ii. 235, v. 561;Āīn, ii. 405;ASR, ii. 17; Hughes,Dict. of Islām, 23).]

35. The Numri, or Lumri (foxes) of Baluchistan, are Jats [?]. These are the Nomardies of Rennell. [They are believed to be aborigines (IGI, xvi. 146;Census Report, Baluchistan, 1911, i. 17).]

36. [There is no evidence, beyond resemblance of name, to connect the Jats with the Getae.]

37. Royal pastors [?]

38. [iv. 59.] The sun was their ‘great deity,’ though they had in Xamolxis a lord of terror, with affinity to Yama, or the Hindu Pluto. “The chief divinity of the Fenns, a Scythic race, was Yammalu” (Pinkerton’sHist. of the Goths, vol. ii. p. 215).

39. iv. 45 [Asia probably means ‘land of the rising sun.’]

40. Āsa, ‘hope.’

41. Sakambhari: fromsakham, the plural ofsakha, ‘branch or race,’ andambhar, ‘covering, protecting.’ [The word means ‘herb nourishing.’]

42. Mata, ‘mother.’

43.Aswaandhayaare synonymous Sanskrit terms for ‘horse’;aspin Persian; and as applied by the prophet Ezekiel [xxxviii. 6] to the Getic invasion of Scythia,A.C.600: “the sons of Togarmah riding on horses”; described by Diodorus, the period the same as the Takshak invasion of India.

44. [Hystaspes is from old Persian, Vishtāspa, ‘possessor of horses.’ The author derives it from a modern Hindi wordhīnsna, ‘to neigh,’ possibly from recollection of the story in Herodotus iii. 85.]

45. [He possibly refers to the statement (Germania, v.), that their coins bore the impress of a two-horse chariot.]

46. Asirgarh, ‘fortress of the Asi’ [IGI, vi. 12].

47. The great (maha) warrior (vir). [Buddha lived 567-487B.C.: Mahāvīra, founder of Jainism, died about 527B.C.]

48. Yeutland was the name given to the whole Cimbric Chersonese, or Jutland (Pinkerton,On the Goths).

49. Turk, Turushka, Takshak, or ‘Taunak, fils de Turc’ (Abulghazi,History of the Tatars).

50.Histoire des Huns, vol. i. p. 42.

51. Though Tacitus calls the German tribes indigenous, it is evident he knew their claim to Asiatic origin, when he asks, “Who would leave the softer abodes of Asia for Germany, where Nature yields nothing but deformity?”

52. In an inscription of the Geta or Jat Prince of Salindrapur (Salpur) of the fifth century, he is styled “of the race of Tusta” (qu.Tuisto?). It is in that ancient nail-headed character used by the ancient Buddhists of India, and still the sacred character of the Tatar Lamas: in short, the Pali. All the ancient inscriptions I possess of the branches of the Agnikulas, as the Chauhan, Pramara, Solanki, and Parihara, are in this character. That of the Jat prince styles him “Jat Kathida” (qu.of (da) Cathay?). From Tuisto and Woden we have our Tuesday and Wednesday. In India, Wednesday is Budhwar (Dies Mercurii), and Tuesday Mangalwar (Dies Martis), the Mardi of the French.

53. Tacitus,Germania, xxxviii.

54. The gau, or cow, symbolic of Prithivi, the earth. On this see note, p. 33.

55. [Germania, ix.]

56. Krishna is the preserving deity of the Hindu triad. Krishna is of the Indu line of Budha, whom he worshipped prior to his own deification.

57.‘Mahurat ka shikar.’

58. The Siebi of Tacitus.

59. Sammes’sSaxon Antiquities.

60. Hara is the Thor of Scandinavia; Hari is Budha, Hermes, or Mercury.

61. Mallet derives it fromkempfer, ‘to fight.’ [The name is said to mean ‘comrades’ (Rhys,Celtic Britain, 116). Irmansūl means ‘a colossus,’ and has no connexion with Skr.sūla(Grimm,Teutonic Mythology, i. 115).]

62.Kuis a mere prefix, meaning ‘evil’; ‘the evil striker (Mar).’ Hence, probably, the Mars of Rome. The birth of Kumar, the general of the army of the gods, with the Hindus, is exactly that of the Grecians, born of the goddess Jahnavi (Juno) without sexual intercourse. Kumāra is always accompanied by the peacock, the bird of Juno. [Kumāra probably means ‘easily dying’; there is no connexion with Mars, originally a deity of vegetation.]

63. For a drawing of the Scandinavian god of battle see Sammes.

64. I have in contemplation to give to the public a few of the sixty-nine books of the poems of Chand, the last great bard of the last Hindu emperor of India, Prithwiraja. They are entirely heroic: each book a relation of one of the exploits of this prince, the first warrior of his time. They will aid a comparison between the Rajput and Scandinavian bards, and show how far the Provençal Troubadour, the Neustrienne Trouveur, and Minnesinger of Germany, have anything in common with the Rajput Bardai. [For Rajput bards on horseback, drunk with opium, singing songs to arouse warriors’ courage, see Manucci ii. 437 f.]

65. Ἥλυσιος, from Ἥλιος, ‘the sun’; also a title of Apollo, the Hari of India. [The two words, from the accentuation, can have no connexion.]

66. This title of the father of Rama denotes a ‘charioteer’ [‘having ten chariots.’ Harsha (A.D.612-647) discarded the chariot (Smith,EHI, 339)].

67. The Indian satrapy of Darius, says Herodotus [iii. 94], was the richest of all the Persian provinces, and yielded six hundred talents of gold. Arrian informs us that his Indo-Scythic subjects, in his wars with Alexander, were the élite of his army. Besides the Sakasenae, we find tribes in name similar to those included in the thirty-six Rajkula; especially the Dahae (Dahya, one of the thirty-six races). The Indo-Scythic contingent was two hundred war chariots and fifteen elephants, which were marshalled with the Parthii on the right, and also near Darius’s person. By this disposition they were opposed to the cohort commanded by Alexander in person. The chariots commenced the action, and prevented a manœuvre of Alexander to turn the left flank of the Persians. Of their horse, also, the most honourable mention is made; they penetrated into the division where Parmenio commanded, to whom Alexander was compelled to send reinforcements. The Grecian historian dwells with pleasure on Indo-Scythic valour: “there were no equestrian feats, no distant fighting with darts, but each fought as if victory depended on his sole arm.” They fought the Greeks hand to hand [Arrian,Anabasis, iii. 15].But the loss of empire was decreed at Arbela, and the Sakae and Indo-Scythae had the honour of being slaughtered by the Yavans of Greece, far from their native land, in the aid of the king of kings.

But the loss of empire was decreed at Arbela, and the Sakae and Indo-Scythae had the honour of being slaughtered by the Yavans of Greece, far from their native land, in the aid of the king of kings.

68. The Kathi are celebrated in Alexander’s wars. The Kathiawar Kathi can be traced from Multan (the ancient abode) [mūlasthāna, ‘principal place’]. The Dahya (Dahae), Johya (the latter Hunnish), and Kathi are amongst the thirty-six races. All dwelt, six centuries ago, within the five streams and in the deserts south of the Ghara. The two last have left but a name.

69. The Sakae had invaded the inhabitants on the borders of the Pontic Sea: whilst engaged in dividing the booty, the Persian generals surprised them at night, and exterminated them. To eternize the remembrance of this event, the Persians heaped up the earth round a rock in the plain where the battle was fought, on which they erected two temples, one to the goddess Anaītis, the other to the divinities Omanus and Anandate, and then founded the annual festival calledSacaea, still celebrated by the possessors of Zela. Such is the account by some authors of the origin ofSacaea. According to others it dates from the reign of Cyrus only. This prince, they say, having carried the war into the country of the Sakae (Massagetae of Herodotus) lost a battle. Compelled to fall back on his magazines, abundantly stored with provisions, but especially wine, and having halted some time to refresh his army, he departed before the enemy, feigning a flight, and leaving his camp standing full of provisions. The Sakae, who pursued, reaching the abandoned camp stored with provisions, gave themselves up to debauch. Cyrus returned and surprised the inebriated and senseless barbarians. Some, buried in profound sleep, were easily massacred; others occupied in drinking and dancing, without defence, fell into the hands of armed foes: so that all perished. The conqueror, attributing his success to divine protection, consecrated this day to the goddess honoured in his country, and decreed it should be called ‘the day of theSacaea.’ This is the battle related by Herodotus, to which Strabo alludes, between the Persian monarch and Tomyris, queen of the Getae. Amongst the Rajput Sakha, all grand battles attended with fatal results are termedsakha. When besieged, without hope of relief, in the last effort of despair, the females are immolated, and the warriors, decorated in saffron robes, rush on inevitable destruction. This is to performsakha, where every branch (sakha) is cut off. Chitor has to boast of having thrice (and a half) suffered sakha.Chitor sakha ka pap, ‘by the sin of the sack of Chitor,’ the most solemn adjuration of the Guhilot Rajput. If such the origin of the festival from the slaughter of the Sakae of Tomyris, it will be allowed to strengthen the analogy contended for between the Sakae east and west the Indus. [For the Sacaea festival see Sir J. Frazer,The Golden Bough, The Dying God, 113 ff. It has no connexion with the Rajput Sākha, ‘a fight,’ which, again, is a different word from Sākha, ‘a branch, clan.’]

70. I presented a work on this subject to the Royal Asiatic Society, as well as another on Palmistry, etc.

71.Madhuis intoxicating drink, frommadhu, ‘a bee,’ in Sanskrit [madhu, ‘anything sweet’]. It is well known that mead is from honey. It would be curious if the German mead was from the Indian madhu (bee): then both cup (kharpara) and beverage would be borrowed. [Madhudoes not mean ‘a bee’ in Sanskrit.]

72.Amrita(immortal), from the initial privative andmrit, ‘death.’ Thus theImmurthal, or ‘vale of immortality,’ at Neufchatel, is as good Sanskrit as German [?].

73. Abhai Singh, ‘the fearless lion,’ prince of Marwar, whose bard makes this speech at the festal board, when the prince presented with his own hand the cup to the bard.

74. Regner Lodbrog, in his dying ode, when the destinies summon him.

75. Phūl, the flower of the mahua tree, the favourite drink of a Rajput. Classically, in Sanskrit it ismadhūka, of the class Polyandria Monogynia [Bassia latifolia] (seeAs. Res.vol. i. p. 300).

76. A human skull; in the dialects pronouncedkhopar:Qu.cupin Saxon? [Cup, in Low Latincuppa.]

77. The Kanphara [or Kanphata] Jogis, or Gosains, are in great bodies, often in many thousands, and are sought as allies, especially in defensive warfare. In the grand military festivals at Udaipur to the god of war, the scymitar, symbolic of Mars, worshipped by the Guhilots, is entrusted to them [IA, vii. 47 ff.;BG, ix. part i. 543].

78. An entire cemetery of these, besides many detached, I have seen, and also the sacred rites to their manes by the disciples occupying these abodes of austerity, when the flowers of theak[Calatropis gigantea] and leaves of evergreen were strewed on the grave, and sprinkled with the pure element.

79. Mallet’sNorthern Antiquities, chap. xii.

80. Mallet chap. xii. vol. i. p. 289.

81. Edda.

82. Mallet’sNorthern Antiquities, chap. xii. The Celtic Franks had the same custom. The arms of Chilperic, and the bones of the horse on which he was to be presented to Odin, were found in his tomb.

83. The Dakini (the Jigarkhor of Sindh) is the genuine vampire [Āīn, ii. 338 f.]. Captain Waugh, after a long chase in the valley of Udaipur, speared a hyena, whose abode was the tombs, and well known as the steed on which the witch of Ar sallied forth at night. Evil was predicted: and a dangerous fall, subsequently, in chasing an elk, was attributed to his sacrilegious slaughter of the weird sister’s steed.

84. Pitri-deva, ‘Father-lords.’

85. Mallet chap. xii.

86. At Gwalior, on the east side of that famed fortress, where myriads of warriors have fattened the soil, these phosphorescent lights often present a singular appearance. I have, with friends whose eyes this will meet, marked the procession of these lambent night-fires, becoming extinguished at one place and rising at another, which, aided by the unequallocale, have been frequently mistaken for the Mahratta prince returning with his numerous torch-bearers from a distant day’s sport. I have dared as bold a Rajput as ever lived to approach them; whose sense of the levity of my desire was strongly depicted, both in speech and mien: “men he would encounter, but not the spirits of those erst slain in battle.” It was generally about the conclusion of the rains that these lights were observed, when evaporation took place from these marshy grounds impregnated with salts.

87. At Dwarka, the god of thieves is called Budha Trivikrama, or of triple energy: the Hermes Triplex, or three-headed Mercury of the Egyptians. [No such cult is mentioned in the account of Dwārka,BG, viii. 601.]

88. Caesar informs us that the Celts of Britain would not eat the hare, goose, or domestic fowl. The Rajput will hunt the first, but neither eats it, nor the goose, sacred to the god of battle (Hara). The Rajput of Mewar eats the jungle fowl, but rarely the domestic.

89. As he did also to Balnath (the god Bal) in the ancient times of India. Thebaldan, or gift of the bull to the sun, is well recorded. [Baldān,balidānadoes not mean the offering of a bull: it is the daily presentation of a portion of the meat to Earth and other deities.] There are numerous temples in Rajasthan of Baalim [?]; and Balpur (Mahadeo) has several in Saurashtra. All represent the sun—Peor his other name, when he enticedIsrael in Sittim, on their march from Nile.Paradise Lost, book i. 412 f. [77].The temple of Solomon was to Bal, and all the idolaters of that day seem to have held to the grosser tenets of Hinduism.

Peor his other name, when he enticedIsrael in Sittim, on their march from Nile.Paradise Lost, book i. 412 f. [77].

Peor his other name, when he enticed

Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile.

Paradise Lost, book i. 412 f. [77].

The temple of Solomon was to Bal, and all the idolaters of that day seem to have held to the grosser tenets of Hinduism.

90. InAswa(medhasignifies ‘to kill’) we have the derivation of the ancient races, sons of Bajaswa, who peopled the countries on both sides the Indus, and the probable etymon ofAsia[?]. The Assakenoi, the Ariaspai of Alexander’s historians, and Aspasianae, to whom Arsaces fled from Seleucus, and whom Strabo terms a Getic race, have the same origin; hence Asigarh, ‘the fortress of the Asi’ (erroneously termed Hansi), and Asgard were the first settlements of the Getic Asi in Scandinavia. Alexander received the homage of all these Getic races at ‘the mother of cities,’ Balkh, ‘seat of Cathaian Khan’ (the Jat Kathida of my inscription), according to Marco Polo, from whom Milton took his geography.

91. The last was undertaken by the celebrated Sawai Jai Singh of Amber; but the milk-white steed of the sun, I believe, was not turned out, or assuredly the Rathors would have accepted the challenge.

92. A milk-white steed is selected with peculiar marks. On liberation, properly guarded, he wanders where he listeth. It is a virtual challenge. Arjuna guarded the steed liberated by Yudhishthira; but that sent round by Parikshita, his grandson, “was seized by the Takshak of the north.” The same fate occurred to Sagara, father of Dasaratha, which involved the loss of his kingdom.

93. The Sarju, or Gandak, from the Kumaun mountains, passes through Kosalades, the dominion of Dasaratha.

94. The horse’s return after a year evidently indicates an astronomical revolution, or the sun’s return to the same point in the ecliptic. This return from his southern declination must have been always a day of rejoicing to the Scythic and Scandinavian nations, who could not, says Gibbon, fancy a worse hell than a large abode open to the cold wind of the north. To the south they looked for the deity; and hence, with the Rajputs, a religious law forbids their doors being to the north.

95. Kaikeya is supposed by the translator, Dr. Carey, to be a king of Persia, the Kaivansa preceding Darius. The epithetKainot unfrequently occurs in Hindu traditional couplets. One, which I remember, is connected with the ancient ruins of Abhaner in Jaipur, recording the marriage of one of its princes with a daughter of Kaikamb.Tu betiKaikambki, nam Parmala ho, etc. ‘Thou art the daughter ofKaikamb: thy name Fairy Garland.’Kaiwas the epithet of one of the Persian dynasties.Qu.Kam-bakhsh, the Cambyses of the Greeks? [Cambyses, Kābuzīya or Kambūzīya, possibly ‘a bard’ (Rawlinson,Herodotus, iii. 543).]

Tu betiKaikambki, nam Parmala ho, etc. ‘Thou art the daughter ofKaikamb: thy name Fairy Garland.’Kaiwas the epithet of one of the Persian dynasties.Qu.Kam-bakhsh, the Cambyses of the Greeks? [Cambyses, Kābuzīya or Kambūzīya, possibly ‘a bard’ (Rawlinson,Herodotus, iii. 543).]

96. Benares.

97. Tibet or Ava [N. Bengal]

98. Bihar.

99. Sind valley.

100. Unknown to me [W. and S. Panjab and its vicinity].

101. Peninsula of Kathiawar.

102. I have seen several of these sacrificial pillars of stone of very ancient date. Many years ago, when all the Rajput States were suffering from the thraldom of the Mahrattas, a most worthy and wealthy banker of Surat, known by the family name of Trivedi, who felt acutely for the woes inflicted by incessant predatory foes on the sons of Rama and Krishna, told me, with tears in his eyes, that the evils which afflicted Jaipur were to be attributed to the sacrilege of the prince, Jagat Singh, who had dared to abstract the gold plates of the sacrificial pillars, and send them to his treasury: worse than Rehoboam, who, when he took away from the temple “the shields of gold Solomon had made,” had the grace to substitute others of brass. Whether, when turned into currency, it went as a war contribution to the Mahrattas, or was applied to the less worthy use of his concubine queen, ‘the essence of camphor,’ it was of a piece with the rest of this prince’s unwise conduct. Jai Singh, who erected the pillars, did honour to his country, of which he was a second founder, and under whom it attained the height from which it has now fallen. [Some sacrificial pillars (yūpa) were recently found in the bed of the Jumna near Mathura, with inscriptions dated in the twenty-fourth year of Kanishka’s reign, aboutA.D.102.]

103. On the Nauroz, or festival of the new year, the Great Mogul slays a camel with his own hand, which is distributed, and eaten by the court favourites. [A camel is sacrificed at the Īdu-l-azha festival (Hughes,Dict. Islām, 192 ff.).]

104. This was native gold, of a peculiarly dark and brilliant hue, which was compared to the fruit jambu (not unlike a damson). Everything forms an allegory with the Hindus; and the production of this metal is appropriated to the period of gestation of Jahnavi, the river-goddess (Ganges), when by Agni, or fire, she produced Kumara, the god of war, the commander of the army of the gods. This was when she left the place of her birth, the Himalaya mountain (the great storehouse of metallic substances), whose daughter she is: and doubtless this is in allusion to some very remote period, when, bursting her rock-bound bed, Ganga exposed from ‘her side’ veins of this precious metal.

105. Little bags of brocade, filled with seeds of the sesamum or cakes of the same, are distributed by the chiefs to friends on this occasion. While the author writes, he has before him two of these, sent to him by the young Mahratta prince, Holkar.

106. Sivaratri would be ‘father night’ [?]. Siva-Iswara is the ‘universal father.’

107. Ferishta, the compiler of the imperial history of India, gives us a Persian or Arabic derivation of this, fromBal, ‘the sun,’ andbec, ‘an idol.’ [This has not been traced in Dow or Briggs.]

108. Corrupted to Palmyra, the etymon of which, I believe, has never been given, which is a version of Tadmor. In Sanskrit,tal, ortar, is the ‘date-tree’;morsignifies ‘chief.’ We have more than one ‘city of palms’ (Talpur) in India; and the tribe ruling in Haidarabad, on the Indus, is calledTalpuri, from the place whence they originated. [Tadmor is Semitic, probably meaning ‘abounding in palms.’ The suggested derivation is impossible.]

109. 1 Kings xiv. 23.

110.Ficus religiosa.It presents a perfect resemblance to the popul (poplar) of Germany and Italy, a species of which is the aspen. [They belong to different orders.] So similar is it, that the specimen of the pipal from Carolina is called, in the Isola Bella of the Lago Maggiore,Populus angulata; and another, in the Jardin des Plantes at Toulon, is termed theFicus populifolia, ou figuier à feuilles de peuplier. The aspen, or ash, held sacred by the Celtic priests, is said to be the mountain-ash. ‘The calf of Bal’ is generally placed under the pipal; and Hindu tradition sanctifies a never-dying stem, which marks the spot where the Hindu Apollo, Hari (the sun), was slain by the savage Bhil on the shores of Saurashtra. [This is known as the Prāchi Pīpal, and death rites are performed close to it (BG, viii. 271, note 2).]

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