Everything that is written in the Korān itself is supposed to have been brought direct from God by the angel Gabriel.[15]
Notes:
1. In planting mango groves, it is a rule that they shall be as far from each other as not to admit of their branches ever meeting. 'Plant trees, but let them not touch' ('Ām lagao, nis lageñ nahīñ') is the maxim. [W. H. S.]
2. Pakkā; the word here means 'cemented with lime mortar', and not only with mud (kachchā).
3. The chambēlī is known in science as the Jasminum grandiflorum, and the mango-tree as Mangifera Indica.
4. A small principality west of Rīwā, and 110 miles north-west of Jubbulpore. It is also known as Nāgaudh, or Nāgod.
5. Compare the account of the marriage of the tulasī shrub (Ocymum sanctum) with the sālagrām stone, or fossil ammonite, in Chapter 19, post.
6. There is a sublime passage in the Psalms of David, where the lightning is said to be the arrows of God. Psalm lxxvii:
17, 'The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad.
18. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.' [W. H. S.]
The passage is quoted from the Authorized Bible version; the Prayer Book version is finer.
7. 'We guard them from every devil driven away with stones; except him who listeneth by stealth, at whom a visible flame is darted.' Korān, chapter 15, Sale's translation. See post, end of this chapter.
8. Nine Hindoos out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, throughout India, believe the rainbow to arise from the breath of the snake, thrown up from the surface of the earth, as water is thrown up by whales from the surface of the ocean. [W. H. S,]