[9] In this wild legend, resembling one in the first book of the Rámáyaṇa, I have omitted some details for reasons which will be obvious to those who read it in the original.
[10] i. e. the six Pleiades.
[11] Mr. Tylor (in his Primitive Culture, Vol. II, p. 176) speaking of Slavonian superstitions, says, “A man whose eyebrows meet as if his soul were taking flight to enter some other body, may be marked by this sign either as a were-wolf or a vampire.” In Icelandic Sagas a man with meeting eyebrows is said to be a werewolf. The same idea holds in Denmark, also in Germany, whilst in Greece it is a sign that a man is a Brukolak or Vampire. (Note by Baring-Gould in Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties). The same idea is found in Bohemia, see Grohmann’s Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 210. Cp. Grimm’s Irische Märchen, p. cviii.
[12] I read ásta for áśu.
[13] rajas in Sanskrit means dust and also passion.
[14] i. e. immunity from future births.
[15] i. e. desire, wrath, covetousness, bewilderment, pride and envy.
[16] Cp. the Æthiopica of Heliodorus, Book VII, ch. 15, where the witch is armed with a sword during her incantations; and Homer’s Odyssey, XI, 48. See also for the magic virtues of steel Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, pp. 312, 313.
[17] See Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 289, where a young man overhears a spell with similar results. See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 115.
[18] I read tan tad.