[15] So in Heliodorus, Æthiopica, Lib. III, cap. XIII.
ἀλλά το͂ις τ’ ἀφθάλμοις ἄν γνωσθε͂ιεν ἀτενὲς διόλου βλέποντες καὶ τὸ βλέφαρον οὔ ποτ’ ἐπιμύοντες.—In the third canto of the Purgatorio Dante is much troubled at finding that Virgil, being a disembodied spirit, casts no shadow.
[16] Kali is the side of the die marked with one point. Dvápara is the side marked with two. They are personified here as demons of gambling. They are also the present, i. e., the fourth and the third Yugas or ages of the world.
[17] Cp. Milton’s Comus, v. 421 and ff. The word “might” also means “fire”. This “fire” burnt up the hunter.
The pun in the previous sentence cannot be rendered in English.
[18] Here there is a pun. Ambara also means the sky.
[19] Preller in his Griechische Mythologie, Vol. II, p. 475, refers to a Servian story, in which a shepherd saves the life of a snake in a forest fire. In return for this service, the snake’s father gives him endless treasures, and teaches him the language of birds.
[20] For the jewels in the heads of reptiles see the long note in Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 214. The passage in “As you like it” will occur to every one. Snakes’ crowns are mentioned in Grössler, Sagen der Grafschaft Mansfeld, p. 178, in Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, pp. 403–405, and in Grohmann, Sagen aus Böhmen, pp. 219 and 223.
[21] Daśa means “ten,” and also “bite.”
[22] In Prester John’s letter quoted by Baring Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, New Edition, p. 43, we find, “In one of our lands, hight Zone, are worms called in our tongue Salamanders. These worms can only live in fire, and they build cocoons like silkworms, which are unwound by the ladies of our palace, and spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn by our Exaltedness. These dresses, in order to be cleansed and washed, are cast into flames.”