Tale XXIII.
[1.] “The five colours,” see [note 5, Tale IV].
“The seven precious things,” are variously stated. Sometimes they are gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, red pearls, diamond and coral. Sometimes gold and silver are left out of the reckoning, and rubies and emeralds substituted. See Köppen, i. 540 et seq. The extravagant and incongruous description in the text is not artistic.
[2.] The month Pushja. Before the time of Vikramâditja astronomy was not studied in India as a science; the course of the heavenly bodies was observed, but only for the sake of determining the times and seasons of feasts and sacrifices. The moon was the chief subject of observation and of the more correct results of the same. Her path was divided into twenty-eight “houses” or “mansions” called naxatra. This division was invented by the Chinese, and India received it from them about 1100 B.C. The naxatravidjâ or the knowledge of the moon-mansions, is set down in one of the oldest Upanishad as a special kind of knowledge. In the oldest enumeration extant of the moon-mansions only twenty-seven are mentioned, and the first of them is called Krittikâ, and Abhigit, which is the 20th, according to the latest enumeration, is wanting; other lists have other discrepancies. It is worthy of notice that Kandramas, the earliest name by which the moon is invoked in the Vêda, is composed of kandra, “shining,” and mas, “to measure,” because the moon measured time, and the various names of the moon in all the so-called Indo-European languages are supposed to come from this last word. There were also four moon-divinities invoked, as Kuhû, Sinivali, Râkâ, and Anumati, in the Rig Vêda hymns; these are all feminine deities. Soma, the later moon-divinity, however, was masculine, and had twenty-seven of the fifty daughters of Daxa for his wives. Kandramas was also a male divinity. The worship of the four goddesses I have named was afterwards superseded by four (also feminine) deifications of the phases of the moon. There seems a little difficulty, however, about fitting their names to them. Pushja, with which we are more particularly concerned, would properly imply “waxing,” but she presided nevertheless over the last quarter; Krita, meaning the “finished” course, over the new moon; the appellations of the others fit better. Drapura (derived from dva, two) designated the second quarter, and Khârvâ, “the beginning to wane,” the full moon. In the list given by Amarasinha of the moon-mansions, Pushja is the name of the eighth, in the Mahâ Bhârata it stands for the sixth.
The month Pauscha answers to our December. (Lassen, iii. 819.)
[3.] We have many early proofs that India possessed an indigenous breed of hunting-dogs of noble and somewhat fierce character. They were much esteemed as hunting-dogs by the Persians, and formed an important article of commerce. Herodotus (i. 192) mentions their being imported into Babylon; whether the mighty hunter Nimrod had a high opinion of them, there is perhaps no means of ascertaining. Strabo (xv. i. § 31) says they were not afraid to hunt lions. In the Ramajana, (ii. 70, 21) Ashvapati gives Rama a present of “swift asses and dogs bred in the palace, large in stature, with the strength of tigers, and teeth meet to fight withal.” Alexander found them sufficiently superior to his own to take with him a present of them offered him by Sopeithes. Aristobulos, Megasthenes, and Ælianus mention their qualities with admiration. Their strength and courage led to the erroneous tradition that they were suckled by tigers (see Pliny, viii. 65, I). Plutarch (De Soc. Anim. x. 4) quotes a passage from an earlier Greek writer, saying they were so noble, that though when they caught a hare they gladly sucked his blood, yet that if one lay down exhausted with the course, they would not kill it, but stood round it in a circle, wagging their tails to show their enjoyment was not in the blood, but in the victory.
The house-dog and herd-dog, however, was rather looked down upon; it and the ass were the only animals the Kandala or lowest caste were allowed to possess (Manu, x. 51), and it is still called Paria-dog (Bp Heber’s “Journey,” i. 490).
[4.] A functionary invented by the Mongolian tale-repeater. The idea evidently borrowed from his knowledge of the paramount authority of the Talé Lama of Tibet, leading him to suppose there must exist a corresponding dignity in India.
[5.] Barin Tschidaktschi Erdekctu, “The mighty one at taking distant aim.” (Jülg.)
[6.] Gesser Khan, the great hero of Mongolian tales; called also “The mighty Destroyer of the root of the seven evils in the seven places of the earth.” (Jülg.)
[7.] Tschin-tâmani, Sanskrit, “Thought-jewel,” is a jewel possessing the magic power of producing whatever object the possessor of it sets his heart upon. (Böhtlingk and Roth, Sanskrit Dict.) See infra, note 2, to “The False Friend,” and note 8 to “Vikramâditja’s Youth.”
8. Barss-Irbiss, “leopard-tiger.” (Jülg.)
