[101]. Peninsula of Kathiawar.
[102]. I have seen several of these sacrificial pillars of stone of very ancient date. Many years ago, when all the Rajput States were suffering from the thraldom of the Mahrattas, a most worthy and wealthy banker of Surat, known by the family name of Trivedi, who felt acutely for the woes inflicted by incessant predatory foes on the sons of Rama and Krishna, told me, with tears in his eyes, that the evils which afflicted Jaipur were to be attributed to the sacrilege of the prince, Jagat Singh, who had dared to abstract the gold plates of the sacrificial pillars, and send them to his treasury: worse than Rehoboam, who, when he took away from the temple “the shields of gold Solomon had made,” had the grace to substitute others of brass. Whether, when turned into currency, it went as a war contribution to the Mahrattas, or was applied to the less worthy use of his concubine queen, ‘the essence of camphor,’ it was of a piece with the rest of this prince’s unwise conduct. Jai Singh, who erected the pillars, did honour to his country, of which he was a second founder, and under whom it attained the height from which it has now fallen. [Some sacrificial pillars (yūpa) were recently found in the bed of the Jumna near Mathura, with inscriptions dated in the twenty-fourth year of Kanishka’s reign, about A.D. 102.]
[103]. On the Nauroz, or festival of the new year, the Great Mogul slays a camel with his own hand, which is distributed, and eaten by the court favourites. [A camel is sacrificed at the Īdu-l-azha festival (Hughes, Dict. Islām, 192 ff.).]
[104]. This was native gold, of a peculiarly dark and brilliant hue, which was compared to the fruit jambu (not unlike a damson). Everything forms an allegory with the Hindus; and the production of this metal is appropriated to the period of gestation of Jahnavi, the river-goddess (Ganges), when by Agni, or fire, she produced Kumara, the god of war, the commander of the army of the gods. This was when she left the place of her birth, the Himalaya mountain (the great storehouse of metallic substances), whose daughter she is: and doubtless this is in allusion to some very remote period, when, bursting her rock-bound bed, Ganga exposed from ‘her side’ veins of this precious metal.
[105]. Little bags of brocade, filled with seeds of the sesamum or cakes of the same, are distributed by the chiefs to friends on this occasion. While the author writes, he has before him two of these, sent to him by the young Mahratta prince, Holkar.
[106]. Sivaratri would be ‘father night’ [?]. Siva-Iswara is the ‘universal father.’
[107]. Ferishta, the compiler of the imperial history of India, gives us a Persian or Arabic derivation of this, from Bal, ‘the sun,’ and bec, ‘an idol.’ [This has not been traced in Dow or Briggs.]
[108]. Corrupted to Palmyra, the etymon of which, I believe, has never been given, which is a version of Tadmor. In Sanskrit, tal, or tar, is the ‘date-tree’; mor signifies ‘chief.’ We have more than one ‘city of palms’ (Talpur) in India; and the tribe ruling in Haidarabad, on the Indus, is called Talpuri, from the place whence they originated. [Tadmor is Semitic, probably meaning ‘abounding in palms.’ The suggested derivation is impossible.]
[109]. 1 Kings xiv. 23.
[110]. Ficus religiosa. It presents a perfect resemblance to the popul (poplar) of Germany and Italy, a species of which is the aspen. [They belong to different orders.] So similar is it, that the specimen of the pipal from Carolina is called, in the Isola Bella of the Lago Maggiore, Populus angulata; and another, in the Jardin des Plantes at Toulon, is termed the Ficus populifolia, ou figuier à feuilles de peuplier. The aspen, or ash, held sacred by the Celtic priests, is said to be the mountain-ash. ‘The calf of Bal’ is generally placed under the pipal; and Hindu tradition sanctifies a never-dying stem, which marks the spot where the Hindu Apollo, Hari (the sun), was slain by the savage Bhil on the shores of Saurashtra. [This is known as the Prāchi Pīpal, and death rites are performed close to it (BG, viii. 271, note 2).]