[92]. A milk-white steed is selected with peculiar marks. On liberation, properly guarded, he wanders where he listeth. It is a virtual challenge. Arjuna guarded the steed liberated by Yudhishthira; but that sent round by Parikshita, his grandson, “was seized by the Takshak of the north.” The same fate occurred to Sagara, father of Dasaratha, which involved the loss of his kingdom.
[93]. The Sarju, or Gandak, from the Kumaun mountains, passes through Kosalades, the dominion of Dasaratha.
[94]. The horse’s return after a year evidently indicates an astronomical revolution, or the sun’s return to the same point in the ecliptic. This return from his southern declination must have been always a day of rejoicing to the Scythic and Scandinavian nations, who could not, says Gibbon, fancy a worse hell than a large abode open to the cold wind of the north. To the south they looked for the deity; and hence, with the Rajputs, a religious law forbids their doors being to the north.
[95]. Kaikeya is supposed by the translator, Dr. Carey, to be a king of Persia, the Kaivansa preceding Darius. The epithet Kai not unfrequently occurs in Hindu traditional couplets. One, which I remember, is connected with the ancient ruins of Abhaner in Jaipur, recording the marriage of one of its princes with a daughter of Kaikamb.
Tu beti Kaikamb ki, nam Parmala ho, etc. ‘Thou art the daughter of Kaikamb: thy name Fairy Garland.’ Kai was the epithet of one of the Persian dynasties. Qu. Kam-bakhsh, the Cambyses of the Greeks? [Cambyses, Kābuzīya or Kambūzīya, possibly ‘a bard’ (Rawlinson, Herodotus, iii. 543).]
[96]. Benares.
[97]. Tibet or Ava [N. Bengal]
[98]. Bihar.
[99]. Sind valley.
[100]. Unknown to me [W. and S. Panjab and its vicinity].