[166] Not the images in Chinese temples, which are described by travellers as very hideous, but the beautiful women of China. Persian poets often term pretty girls idols, and themselves idolators, for worshipping them.
[167] Surma is the black ore of antimony, or ter-sulphide. The Muslim men apply antimony to their eyelids, but their women use kohl, or lamp-black, for this purpose. It is a popular belief among Indian Muslims that the finest kind of surma comes from Arabia—from the hills of Sinai or Tur, etc. They have a legend that when Moses was on Mount Sinai he asked that the glory of God should be shown to him. He was answered that his mortal sight could not bear the glory; but through a chink of the rock a ray of light was allowed to fall on him, and the rock on which the ray fell was melted into antimony. (Balfour’s Cyclopædia of India.)—There is a curious legend current in the Panjáb regarding the origin of the antimony which is found on the summit of Mount Karanglí, near Pind Dádan Khán, in the Jhelan district. A fakír (religious mendicant) once came from Kashmír and asked the name of the mountain, and was told that it was called Karanglí. He at once exclaimed: “Karanglí sone ranglí!” that is, Karanglí the gold-coloured; whereupon the mountain became all gold. This frightened the good people of the neighbourhood, who dreaded that the place should become a general battle-field for the sake of the gold. So the fakír said: “Karanglí surme ranglí!” that is, Karanglí the antimony-coloured, upon which the mountain became all antimony. This antimony is now to be found on the top of it, but as it is surrounded by precipices the antimony cannot be reached, and so the people have to wait until pieces of it are washed down by the rains. When procured it is most valuable, and will, if used for eight days, restore to sight all those who have become blind through sickness or accident. It cannot, however, cure those who are born blind.
[168] “Beautiful Lady”—“Lady Beautiful.”
[169] “Happy King”—“King Prosperous.”
[171] In a Buddhist work entitled Wæsakára-sataka (a hundred stanzas) is the following: “The evil man is to be avoided, though he be arrayed in the robe of all the sciences, as we flee from the serpent, though it be adorned with the kantha jewel.” The natives of Ceylon, says Spence Hardy, believe that this gem is to be found in the throat of the nayá. “It emits a light more brilliant than the purest diamond; and when the serpent wishes to discover anything in the dark it disgorges the substance, swallowing it again when its work is done. It is thought possible to obtain the jewel by throwing dust upon it when out of the serpent’s mouth; but if the reptile should be killed to obtain it, misfortune would certainly follow.”—Eastern Monachism, p. 316. (See also note, ante, p. [232].)
[172] A kind of hill-starling.
[173] Our hero understood bird-language, and the author has probably omitted to mention that he acquired that knowledge by possessing the snake-stone. In the folk-tales of all countries we find that great benefits accrue to a forlorn hero by his overhearing the conversation of birds or beasts, and of demons in Indian stories. The reader will find much to interest him on this subject in an able paper on the Language of Animals by Mr. J. G. Frazer in the first vol. of the Archæological Review, 1888; and I may be permitted to refer him also to my Introduction to John Lane’s Continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, published for the Chaucer Society.
[174] The transformed prince having given birth to a child was ceremonially unclean for the period of forty days.—See the note on pp. 140, 141.
[175] Here our author exhorts his readers.