[23]. The Buddhists appeared in this peninsula and the adjacent continent was the cradle of Buddhism, and here are three of the ‘five’ sacred mounts of their faith, i.e. Girnar, Satrunjaya and Abu. The Author purposes giving, hereafter, an account of his journey through these classic regions. [He refers to Jains; Buddhism arose in Bihār.]
[24]. The Buddhists and Jains are stigmatized as Vidyavan, which, signifying ‘possessed of science,’ is interpreted ‘magician.’
[25]. He is called Arishta-Nemi, ‘the black Nemi,’ from his complexion.
[26]. [The connexion of Hindu with Egyptian beliefs is no longer admitted.]
[27]. The Sun-god (Kan, according to Diodorus) is the Minos of the Egyptians. The hieroglyphics at Turin represent him with the head of an ibis, or eagle, with an altar before him, on which a shade places his offerings, namely, a goose, cakes of bread, and flowers of the lotus, and awaits in humble attitude his doom. In Sanskrit the same word means soul, goose, and swan [?], and the Hindu poet is always punning upon it; though it might be deemed a levity to represent the immaterial portion under so unclassical an emblem. The lotus flowers are alike sacred to the Kan of the Egyptians as to Kanhaiya the mediator of the Hindus, and both are painted blue and bird-headed. The claims of Kanhaiya (contracted Kan) as the sun divinity of the Hindus will be abundantly illustrated in the account of the festivals. [The above theories are obsolete.]
[28]. I do not mean to derive any aid from the resemblance of names, which is here merely accidental. [Nonīta probably = Navanīta, ‘fresh butter,’ a dairy god (Macdonell-Keith, Vedic Index, i. 437).]
[29]. When I heard the octogenarian ruler of Kotah ask his grandson, “Bapalal, have you been tending the cows to-day?” my surprise was converted into pleasure on the origin of the custom being thus classically explained.
[30]. From chha, ‘six,’ and tar, ‘a string or wire.’
[31]. Strabo says the Greeks consider music as originating from Thrace and Asia, of which countries were Orpheus, Musaeus, etc.; and that others “who regard all Asia, as far as India, as a country sacred to Dionysus (Bacchus), attribute to that country the invention of nearly all the science of music. We perceive them sometimes describing the cithara of the Asiatic, and sometimes applying to flutes the epithet of Phrygian. The names of certain instruments, such as the nabla, and others likewise, are taken from barbarous tongues.” This nabla of Strabo is possibly the tabla, the small tabor of India. If Strabo took his orthography from the Persian or Arabic, a single point would constitute the difference between the N (ن) and the T (ﺕ). [The Arabic tabl, tabla, has no connexion with Greek νάβλα, Hebrew nevel.]
[32]. An account of the state of musical science amongst the Hindus of early ages, and a comparison between it and that of Europe, is yet a desideratum in Oriental literature. From what we already know of the science, it appears to have attained a theoretical precision yet unknown to Europe, and that at a period when even Greece was little removed from barbarism. The inspirations of the bards of the first ages were all set to music; and the children of the most powerful potentates sang the episodes of the great epics of Valmiki and Vyasa. There is a distinguished member of the Royal Asiatic Society, and perhaps the only one, who could fill up this hiatus; and we may hope that the leisure and inclination of the Right Honourable Sir Gore Ousely will tempt him to enlighten us on this most interesting point.