“To God and you I recommend
My children deare this day:
But little while, be sure, we have
Within this world to stay.”
But, to appeal to the moral sense of a goldsmith!
Maha (great) raja (king): common address even to those who are not royal. ↩
The name means, “Quietistic Disposition.” ↩
August. In the solar-lunar year of the Hindu the months are divided into fortnights—light and dark. ↩
A flower, whose name frequently occurs in Sanskrit poetry. ↩
The stars being men’s souls raised to the sky for a time proportioned to their virtuous deeds on earth. ↩
A measure of length, each two miles. ↩
The warm region below. ↩
Hindus admire only glossy black hair; the “bonny brown hair” loved by our ballads is assigned by them to low-caste men, witches, and fiends. ↩
A large kind of bat; a popular and silly Anglo-Indian name. It almost justified the irate Scotchman in calling “prodigious lecars” those who told him in India that foxes flew and trees were tapped for toddy. ↩
The Hindus, like the European classics and other ancient peoples, reckon four ages:—The Satya Yug, or Golden Age, numbered 1,728,000 years; the second, or Treta Yug, comprised 1,296,000; the Dwapar Yug had 864,000; and the present, the Kali Yug, has shrunk to 832,000 years. ↩
Especially alluding to prayer. On this point, Southey justly remarks (Preface to Curse of Kehama): “In the religion of the Hindus there is one remarkable peculiarity. Prayers, penances, and sacrifices are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value, in one degree depending upon the disposition or motive of the person who performs them. They are drafts upon heaven for which the gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has made them formidable to the supreme deities themselves.” Moreover, the Hindu gods hear the prayers of those who desire the evil of others. Hence when a rich man becomes poor, his friends say, “See how sharp are men’s teeth!” and, “He is ruined because others could not bear to see his happiness!” ↩
A pond, natural or artificial; in the latter case often covering an extent of ten to twelve acres. ↩
The Hindústani “gilahri,” or little grey squirrel, whose twittering cry is often mistaken for a bird’s. ↩
The autumn or rather the rainy season personified—a hackneyed Hindu prosopopoeia. ↩
Light conversation upon the subject of women is a personal offence to serious-minded Hindus. ↩
Cupid in his two forms, Eros and Anteros. ↩
This is true to life; in the East, women make the first advances, and men do the bégueules. ↩
Raja-hans, a large grey goose, the Hindu equivalent for our swan. ↩
Properly Karnatak; karna in Sanskrit means an ear. ↩
Danta in Sanskrit is a tooth. ↩
Padma means a foot. ↩
A common Hindu phrase equivalent to our “I manage to get on.” ↩
Meaning marriage, maternity, and so forth. ↩
Yama is Pluto; “mother of Yama” is generally applied to an old scold. ↩
Snake-land; the infernal region. ↩
A form of abuse given to Durga, who was the mother of Ganesha (Janus); the latter had an elephant’s head. ↩
Unexpected pleasure, according to the Hindus, gives a bristly elevation to the down of the body. ↩
The Hindus banish “flasks,” et hoc genus omne, from these scenes, and perhaps they are right. ↩
The Pankha, or large common fan, is a leaf of the Corypha umbraculifera, with the petiole cut to the length of about five feet, pared round the edges and painted to look pretty. It is waved by the servant standing behind a chair. ↩
The fabulous mass of precious stones forming the sacred mountain of Hindu mythology. ↩
“I love my love with an ‘S,’ because he is stupid and not psychological.” ↩
Hindu mythology has also its Cerberus, Trisisa, the “three-headed” hound that attends dreadful Yama (Pluto). ↩
Parceque c’est la saison des amours. ↩
The police magistrate, the Catual of Camoens. ↩
The seat of a Hindu ascetic. ↩
The Hindu scriptures. ↩
The Goddess of Prosperity. ↩
In the original the lover is not blamed; this would be the Hindu view of the matter; we might be tempted to think of the old injunction not to seethe a kid in the mother’s milk. ↩
In the original a “maina”—the Gracula religiosa. ↩
As we should say, buried them. ↩
A large kind of black bee, common in India. ↩
The beautiful wife of the demigod Rama Chandra. ↩
The Hindu Ars Amoris. ↩
The old philosophers, believing in a “Sat” (τὸ ὄν), postulated an Asat (τὸ μὴ ὄν) and made the latter the root of the former. ↩
In Western India, a place celebrated for suicides. ↩
Kama Deva. “Out on thee, foul fiend, talk’st thou of nothing but ladies?” ↩
The pipal or Ficus religiosa, a favourite roosting-place for fiends. ↩
India.
