Voomdavee.—XIII. p. 7.
This wife of Veeshnoo is the Goddess of the Earth and of Patience. No direct adoration is paid her; but she is held to be a silent and attentive spectator of all that passes in the world.—Kindersley.
Tassel Grass.—XIII. p. 8.
The Surput, or tassel-grass, which is much the same as the guinea-grass, grows to the height of twelve or fourteen feet. Its stem becomes so thick as to resemble in some measure a reed. It is very strong, and grows very luxuriantly: it is even used as a fence against cattle; for which purpose it is often planted on banks, excavated from ditches, to enclose fields of corn, &c. It grows wild in all the uncultivated parts of India, but especially in the lower provinces, in which it occupies immense tracts; sometimes mixing with, and rising above coppices; affording an asylum for elephants, rhinoceroses, tygers, &c. It frequently is laid by high winds, of which breeding sows fail not to take advantage, by forming their nests, and concealing their young under the prostrate grass.—Oriental Sports, vol. i. p. 32.
Lo, from his trunk, upturn’d, aloft he flings
The grateful shower, and now,
Plucking the broad-leav’d bough
Of yonder plane,—he moves it to and fro.—XIII. p. 9.
Nature has provided the elephant with means to cool its heated surface, by enabling it to draw from its throat, by the aid of its trunk, a copious supply of saliva, which the animal spurts with force very frequently all over its skin. It also sucks up dust, and blows it over its back and sides, to keep off the flies, and may often be seen fanning itself with a large bough, which it uses with great ease and dexterity.—Oriental Sports, vol. i. p. 100.
Till his strong temples, bathed with sudden dews,
Their fragrance of delight and love diffuse.—XIII p. 9.
The Hindoo poets frequently allude to the fragrant juice which oozes, at certain seasons, from small ducts in the temples of the male elephant, and is useful in relieving him from the redundant moisture, with which he is then oppressed; and they even describe the bees as allured by the scent, and mistaking it for that of the sweetest flowers. When Crishna visited Sanc’ha-dwip, and had destroyed the demon who infested that delightful country, he passed along the bank of a river, and was charmed with a delicious odour, which its waters diffused in their course: He was eager to view the source of so fragrant a stream, but was informed by the natives that it flowed from the temples of an elephant, immensely large, milk-white, and beautifully formed; that he governed a numerous race of elephants; and that the odoriferous fluid which exuded from his temples in the season of love had formed the river; that the Devas, or inferior gods, and the Apsarases, or nymphs, bathed and sported in its waters, impassioned and intoxicated with the liquid perfume.—Wilford. Asiatic Researches.
The antic monkeys, whose wild gambols late
Shook the whole wood.—XIII. p. 10.
They are so numerous on the island of Bulama, says Captain Beaver in his excellent book, that I have seen, on a calm evening, when there was not an air sufficiently strong to agitate a leaf, the whole surrounding wood in as much motion, from their playful gambols among its branches, as if it had blown a strong wind.