Preface.
[1.] Kalmuck. “The Khalmoucks or Calmuks, are very far from enjoying in Asia the importance our books of geography assign them. In the Khalmoukia of our imagining, no one knew of the Khalmouks. At last we met with a Lama who had travelled in Eastern Tibet, and he told us that one of the Kolo tribes is called Khalmouk.” The Kolos are a nomad people of Eastern Tibet, of predatory habits, living in inaccessible gorges of the Bayen Kharet mountains, guarded by impassable torrents and frightful precipices, towards the sources of the Yellow River; they only leave their abode to scour the steppes on a mission of pillage upon the Mongolians. The Mongolians of the Koukou-Noor (Blue Lake) hold them in such terror, that there is no monstrous practice they do not ascribe to them. They profess Buddhism equally with the Mongolians. See “Missionary Travels in Tartary, Tibet, and China,” by Abbé Huc, vol. i. chap. iv.
[2.] “The various Dekhan dialects, i.e. of the Tuluvas, Malabars, Tamuls, Cingalese, of the Carnatic, &c., though greatly enriched from Sanskrit, would appear to have an entirely independent origin. The same may be said of the popular traditions.” Lassen, vol. i. 362–364.
[3.] The Tirolean legend of the Curse of the Marmolata, which I have given at pp. 278–335 of “Household Stories from the Land of Hofer,” may well be thought to be a reproduction and reapplication of this, one of the most ancient of myths.
[4.] Even the Mahâ Bhârata, however, gives no consecutive and reliable account of the original settlement in the country. Franz Bopp, one of the earliest to attempt its translation, thus happily describes it. He likens it to an Egyptian obelisk covered with hieroglyphics, “an dem die Grundform von der Erde zum Himmel strebe, aber eine Fülle von Gestalten, (von denen eine auf die andre deute, eine ohne die andre räthselhaft bleibe,) neben und durch einander hinziehe und Irdisches und Himmlisches wundersam verbinde.”—The pervading plan of the work is one straining from earth upwards to heaven, but overlaid with a multiplicity of figures, each one so intimately related with the other, that any would be incomprehensible without the rest; the thread of the life of one interwoven with those of the others, and all of them together creating a wondrous bond between the things of this world and the things which are above.
[5.] “The only way to gain acquaintance with the early history of India is by making use of its Sagas.” Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. i., pref. p. vii. But I shall have more to say on this head when I come to the story of Vikramâditja.
[6.] Some, however, seem to go too far, when they labour to prove that this is the case with every individual European legend, many of which are manifestly created by Christianity; and write as if every accidental similarity of incident necessarily implied parentage or connexion.
[7.] See introduction to his Translation of Pantschatantra. I have thought it worth while to mention this on account of the present collection being Mongolian.