[5] Literally broke. The vyádhi or disease must have been of the nature of an abscess.
[6] Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur. (Publius Syrus.)
[7] Liebrecht in an essay on some modern Greek songs (Zur Volkskunde, p. 211) gives numerous stories of children who spoke shortly after birth. It appears to have been generally considered an evil omen. Cp. the Romance of Merlin. (Dunlop’s History of Fiction, p. 146.) See Baring Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (New Edition, 1869) p. 170. In a startling announcement of the birth of Antichrist which appeared in 1623, purporting to come from the brothers of the Order of St. John, the following passage occurs,—“The child is dusky, has pleasant mouth and eyes, teeth pointed like those of a cat, ears large, stature by no means exceeding that of other children; the said child, incontinent on his birth, walked and talked perfectly well.”
[8] More literally; blockaded his house with policemen, and his throat with tears.
[9] So in the XXIst of Miss Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales the fakir changes the king’s son into a fly. Cp. also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 127.
[10] Ficus Indica. Such a tree is said to have sheltered an army. Its branches take root and form a natural cloister. Cp. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book IX, lines 1000 and ff.
[11] Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (translation by Stallybrass, p. 121, note,) connects the description of wonderful maidens sitting inside hollow trees or perched on the boughs, with tree-worship. See also Grohmann’s Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 41.
[12] For the illuminating power of female beauty, see Note 3 to the 1st Tale in Miss Stokes’s Collection, where parallels are cited from the folk-lore of Europe and Asia.
[13] Kámadhenu means a cow granting all desires; such a cow is said to have belonged to the sage Vaśishṭa.
[14] Conciliation, bribery, sowing dissension, and war.