[14] Like the two physicians in Gesta Romanorum, LXXVI.
[15] A peculiarly sacred kind of Darbha grass.
[16] M. Lévêque considers that the above story, as told in the Mahábhárata, forms the basis of the Birds of Aristophanes. He identifies Garuḍa with the hoopoe. (Les Mythes et Légendes de l’Inde et de la Perse, p. 14).
[17] Rájila is a striped snake, said to be the same as the ḍuṇḍubha a non-venomous species.
[18] The remarks which Ralston makes (Russian Folk-tales, page 65) with regard to the snake as represented in Russian stories, are applicable to the Nága of Hindu superstition; “Sometimes he retains throughout the story an exclusively reptilian character, sometimes he is of a mixed nature, partly serpent and partly man.” The snakes described in Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, (pp. 402–409,) resemble in some points the snakes which we hear so much of in the present work. See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 277 and ff.
[19] The word nága, which means snake, may also mean, as Dr. Brockhaus explains it, a mountaineer from naga a mountain.
[20] I conjecture kramád for krandat. If we retain krandat we must suppose that the king of the Vidyádharas wept because his scheme of self-sacrifice was frustrated.
[21] I read adhaḥ for adaḥ.
[22] In the Sicilian stories of the Signora von Gonzenbach an ointment does duty for the amṛita, cp. for one instance out of many, page 145 of that work. Ralston remarks that in European stories the raven is connected with the Water of Life. See his exhaustive account of this cycle of stories on pages 231 and 232 of his Russian Folk-tales. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 245, and the story which begins on page 227. In the 33rd of the Syrian stories collected by Prym and Socin we have a king of snakes and water of life.
[23] The home of the serpent race below the earth.