[79]. A. de Humboldt, Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, ii. (Paris, 1819) pp. 369 sq., 429 sq.
[80]. Elsdon Best, “Maori Nomenclature,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 197.
[81]. Herodotus, i. 193; Theophrastus, Historia plantarum, ii. 8. 4; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiii. 31, 34 sq. In this passage Pliny states that naturalists distinguished the sexes of all trees and plants. On Assyrian monuments a winged figure is often represented holding an object which looks like a pine-cone to a palm-tree. The scene has been ingeniously and with great probability explained by Professor E. B. Tylor as the artificial fertilisation of the date-palm by means of the male inflorescence. See his paper in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xii. (1890) pp. 383-393. On the artificial fertilisation of the date-palm, see C. Ritter, Vergleichende Erdkunde von Arabien (Berlin, 1847), ii. 811, 827 sq.
[82]. D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 36, 251. Mohammed forbade the artificial fertilisation of the palm, probably because of the superstitions attaching to the ceremony. But he had to acknowledge his mistake. See D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, p. 230 (a passage pointed out to me by Dr. A. W. Verrall).
[83]. Sir W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (Westminster, 1893), i. 38 sq.; compare Census of India, 1901, vol. xiii., Central Provinces, part i. p. 92.
[84]. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, lxxii., part iii. (Calcutta, 1904) p. 42.
[85]. J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, institutions et cérémonies des peuples de l’Inde (Paris, 1825), ii. 448 sq.; Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, pp. 333-335; W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 110 sq. According to another account, it is Vishnu, not Krishna, to whom the holy plant is annually married in every pious Hindoo family. See Census of India, 1901, vol. xviii., Baroda, p. 125.
[86]. Sir Henry M. Elliot, Memoirs on the History, Folklore, and Distribution of the Races of the North-western Provinces of India, edited by J. Beames (London, 1869), i. 233 sq.
[87]. W. Crooke, op. cit. i. 49.
[88]. Sir W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (Westminster, 1893), i. 147-149, 175. The Salagrama is commonly perforated in one or more places by worms or, as the Hindoos believe, by the legendary insect Vajrakita or by Vishnu himself. The value of the fossil shell depends on its colour, and the number of its convolutions and holes. The black are prized as gracious embodiments of Vishnu; the violet are shunned as dangerous avatars of the god. He who possesses a black Salagrama keeps it wrapped in white linen, washes and adores it daily. A draught of the water in which the shell has been washed is supposed to purge away all sin and to secure the temporal and eternal welfare of the drinker. These fossils are found in Nepaul, in the upper course of the river Gandaka, a northern tributary of the Ganges. Hence the district goes by the name of Salagrami, and is highly esteemed for its sanctity; a visit to it confers great merit on a man. See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à la Chine (Paris, 1782), i. 173 sq.; J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, institutions et cérémonies des peuples de l’Indie (Paris, 1825), ii. 446-448; Sir W. H. Sleeman, op. cit. i. 148 sq., with the editor’s notes; Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, pp. 69 sq.; G. Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vi. Part II. (London and Calcutta, 1893) p. 384; W. Crooke, op. cit. ii. 164 sq.; Indian Antiquary, xxv. (1896) p. 146; G. Oppert, On the Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India (Westminster and Leipsic, 1893), pp. 337-359; id., “Note sur les Sālagrāmas,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 1900), pp. 472-485. The shell derives its name of ammonite from its resemblance to a ram’s horn, recalling the ram-god Ammon.