[6] Pronounce in three syllables Shut-roon-jye: it means, one who triumphs over his foes. So again, in three syllables, Narasing: which means, man-lion, alluding to one of Wishnu's incarnations. (Europeans do not adequately realise that the short final a, in Sanskrit, is always mute. They pronounce e.g. Ráma, Krishna, as if the last letter were long. They are monosyllables.)
[7] "The menace prevented the deed," observes Gibbon, of a would-be assassin of Commodus. That was also the error of the Germans, in 1914.
[8] A heavenly musician.
[9] Dharma does not mean religion in our sense of the word. It means, for every man, that set of obligations laid on him by his caste or status: thus everybody's dharma is different.
[10] A crown prince. Palace intrigues were common in the old Hindoo courts. Each wife thought of nothing but providing the heir to the throne, if not by fair means, then by foul.
[11] Krishna, the lute-player, and flute-player, par excellence. He resembles Odin in this particular.
[12] i.e. the city of lotuses. The final a is mute.
[13] i.e. a line of stars; a constellation; a star intensified.
[14] That is to say, abandoned, dissolute: independence being, in old Hindoo ears, a synonym for every possible species of depravity.
[15] There is here an untranslatable play on mánasa and manasi-já = a feminine god of love.