[11] I. e. skull-cleaver.
[12] Perhaps we ought to read smritvá for śrutvá, “Remembering, calling to mind.”
[13] So in Signora von Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Stories, p. 66, a lovely woman opens with a knife the veins of the sleeping prince and drinks his blood. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 354. Ralston in his Russian Folk-Tales, p. 17, compares this part of the story with a Russian story and that of Sidi Noman in the “Thousand and One Nights,” he refers also to Lane’s Translation, Vol. I, p. 32.
[14] One is tempted to read vikṛitám for vikṛitim, but vikṛiti is translated by the Petersburg lexicographers as Gespensterscheinung. Vikṛitám would mean transformed into a Rákshasí.
[15] Skandha when applied to the Rákshasas means shoulder.
[16] Literally great flesh. “Great” seems to give the idea of unlawfulness, as in the Greek μέγα ἔργον.
[17] Cp. the golden rose in Gaal, Märchen der Magyaren, p. 44.
[18] Reading tasyán for tasmán.
[19] Somadeva no doubt means that the hairs on the king’s body stood on end with joy.
[20] According to the canons of Hindu rhetoric glory is always white.