[86]. At Gwalior, on the east side of that famed fortress, where myriads of warriors have fattened the soil, these phosphorescent lights often present a singular appearance. I have, with friends whose eyes this will meet, marked the procession of these lambent night-fires, becoming extinguished at one place and rising at another, which, aided by the unequal locale, have been frequently mistaken for the Mahratta prince returning with his numerous torch-bearers from a distant day’s sport. I have dared as bold a Rajput as ever lived to approach them; whose sense of the levity of my desire was strongly depicted, both in speech and mien: “men he would encounter, but not the spirits of those erst slain in battle.” It was generally about the conclusion of the rains that these lights were observed, when evaporation took place from these marshy grounds impregnated with salts.
[87]. At Dwarka, the god of thieves is called Budha Trivikrama, or of triple energy: the Hermes Triplex, or three-headed Mercury of the Egyptians. [No such cult is mentioned in the account of Dwārka, BG, viii. 601.]
[88]. Caesar informs us that the Celts of Britain would not eat the hare, goose, or domestic fowl. The Rajput will hunt the first, but neither eats it, nor the goose, sacred to the god of battle (Hara). The Rajput of Mewar eats the jungle fowl, but rarely the domestic.
[89]. As he did also to Balnath (the god Bal) in the ancient times of India. The baldan, or gift of the bull to the sun, is well recorded. [Baldān, balidāna does not mean the offering of a bull: it is the daily presentation of a portion of the meat to Earth and other deities.] There are numerous temples in Rajasthan of Baalim [?]; and Balpur (Mahadeo) has several in Saurashtra. All represent the sun—
Peor his other name, when he enticed
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile.
Paradise Lost, book i. 412 f. [77].
The temple of Solomon was to Bal, and all the idolaters of that day seem to have held to the grosser tenets of Hinduism.
[90]. In Aswa (medha signifies ‘to kill’) we have the derivation of the ancient races, sons of Bajaswa, who peopled the countries on both sides the Indus, and the probable etymon of Asia [?]. The Assakenoi, the Ariaspai of Alexander’s historians, and Aspasianae, to whom Arsaces fled from Seleucus, and whom Strabo terms a Getic race, have the same origin; hence Asigarh, ‘the fortress of the Asi’ (erroneously termed Hansi), and Asgard were the first settlements of the Getic Asi in Scandinavia. Alexander received the homage of all these Getic races at ‘the mother of cities,’ Balkh, ‘seat of Cathaian Khan’ (the Jat Kathida of my inscription), according to Marco Polo, from whom Milton took his geography.
[91]. The last was undertaken by the celebrated Sawai Jai Singh of Amber; but the milk-white steed of the sun, I believe, was not turned out, or assuredly the Rathors would have accepted the challenge.