[26] Pronounce as a trisyllable: Haridás.
[27] The Indian women used to send little earthenware dishes, with a lighted wick in their oil, floating down the Ganges, to symbolise their children's lives. Perhaps they do it still: but all these beautiful old superstitious practices are dying away, in the light of "representative institutions." New lamps for old ones!
[28] That is Shrí, the Hindoo Aphrodite. Only those who have studied Hindoo goddesses on the old temple walls, where they stand with everlasting marble smiles in long silent rows, buried in the jungles that encircle their deserted fanes, will enter into the atmosphere of this strange description.
[29] Daiwatam hi hayottamah, says Somadewa: a good horse is a divine thing.
[30] The Hindoo Æsculapius. Ayurweda, the science of medicine.
[31] A gem that attracts straws, presumably amber. It is always employed by Hindoo poets as an equivalent of our magnet.
[32] i.e. the mirage.
[33] That is, as if she were a character in a play, coming at her cue. The phrase is common in the Hindoo plays.
[34] This is due to the coal-black stem, which gives to a palm tree shorn of its head the look of a tumble-down smoke-grimed chimney. Unshorn, leaning to the wind, it is the most graceful thing in the world, especially seen against the setting sun.
[35] The great jewel on Wishnu's breast.