(Ward, on the Hindoos, vol. IV. p. 19.)—D. S.
[53] Rĭshi, a kind of saint; that holy and superhuman personage which a king or man of the military class may become by the practice of religious austerities. Seven classes of Rishis are enumerated: the Dévarshi, Brahmarshi, Maharshi, Paramarshi, Rájarshi, Kándarshi, and Srutarshi: the order is variously given, but the Rájarshi is inferior to the four preceding ones, and the two last appear to be the inspired saints of the Hindoo mythology.—D. S.
The simple name is especially applied to seven sages of the Bráhmarshi order, contemporary with each of the seven Menus; those of the present Manvantara are: Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, and Vasishta. The names of each series differ: those specified also form, in astronomy, the asterism of the Greater Bear (Wilson).—A. T.
[54] This name, repeated in the Dabistán (see hereafter the chapter upon the Nanak Panthians), never occurred to me elsewhere.—A. T.
[55] The name of a saint celebrated in Hindu mythology, more usually entitled Agastya, the son of both Mitra (the sun) and Varuna (the lord of waters) by Urvasi (a nymph of heaven); he is represented of short stature, and is said by some to have been born in a water-jar: he is famed for having swallowed the ocean, when it had given him offence; at his command also the Vindhya range of mountains prostrated itself, and so remains; hence his present appellation: he is also considered as the regent of the star Canopus—(Wilson’s Dictionary, sub voce).—A. T.
[56] अश्वमेध aśvamédha, from aśva, “a horse,” and médha, “a sacrifice.” Colebrooke, in his Essay on the Védas (As. Res., VIII., ed. Calc.) states, that the horse is “avowedly an emblem of Viráj, or the primeval and universal manifested being. In the last section of the Taittiríya Yajurvéda, the various parts of the horse’s body are described as divisions of time and portions of the universe: morning is his head; the sun, his eye; air, his breath; the moon, his ear; etc. A similar passage in the fourteenth book of the Sátapat´ha bráhmańa, describes the same allegorical horse for the meditation of such as cannot perform an Aśvamédha; and the assemblage of living animals, constituting an imaginary victim at a real Aśvamédha, equally represent the universal Being, according to the doctrines of the Indian scripture. It is not however certain, whether this ceremony did not also give occasion to the institution of another, apparently not authorized by the Védas, in which a horse was actually sacrificed.” That this was really the case, we may infer from the frequent mention of such sacrifices, made in the historical poems of the Hindus and from the analogous instances of them found among the Western nations. The Massageti and the Persíans sacrificed horses to the sun; the Magians also to the rivers (see Herod., l. I. VII.; Xenoph., l. VIII. See also upon the sacrifice of a horse, Exposé de quelques-uns des principaux articles de la Théogonie des Brahmes, par M. l’abbé Dubois, ci-devant Missionnaire dans le Meissour. Paris, 1825).—A. T.
[57] The passage between the asterisks is not in the manuscripts.—D. S.
[58] This passage, relative to space, is as obscure as the subject itself is metaphysical. The notions here expressed are in accordance with the Vedanta doctrine, by which akas, or “pure ether,” is the universal space, including all, and the vacuum between the separate objects therein. There is a vacuum unconnected with every thing, and in it these particular vacuums are absorbed. This appears conformable enough with modern philosophy, but the Hindus applied it to the divine spirit itself: thus, they say that there is a perfect spirit, in which individual souls and the aggregation of all souls take refuge, and so Brahma and the individuated spirits are one: both pure life. We may here recollect that sir Isaac Newton, in attempting to define space, compared it to “Something like the organ of divinity.” According to the Vedanta-sara, there is no difference between the all-ruling spirit and that of the sage; as there is none between the forest and the trees and the inclosed atmosphere; or between the lake and the parts of the water, and the image of the sky which falls in it. We are informed by Damascius, an author of the sixth century of our era, who quotes Eudemos, a disciple of Aristotle (Wolfií Anect. Græca, t. III. p. 259), that the united intellectual all is called “space” by the Magians and by the whole race of the Arians, which name may be applied to the nations inhabiting the countries situated to the East and West of the Indus.—A. T.
[59] The earth according to the Hindus is circular and flat, like the flower of the water-lily, in which the petals project beyond each other: its circumference being four thousand millions of miles. In the centre is mount Sumeru, ascending six hundred thousand miles from the surface of the earth, and descending one hundred and twenty-eight thousand below it. It is one hundred and twenty-eight thousand miles in circumference at its base, and two hundred and fifty-six thousand wide at the top. On this mountain are the heavens of Vishnu, Siva, Indra, Agni, Yama, Noirita, Varúna, Váyú, Kúvéra, Isha, and other gods. The clouds ascend to about one-third of the height of the mountain: at its base are the mountains Mandara, Gundha-mádana, Vipúla, and Súpárshwa, on each of which grows a tree eight thousand eight hundred miles high (Ward’s Hindoos, vol. III. p. 3).—D. S.
[60] According to the Máhábharat, when the Súras and Asúras (the gods and Dáityas, or “demons”) had, by the whirling of the ocean, obtained the Amrita, or “the nectar of immortality,” a fierce dispute arose among them about the possession of it; but Vishnu succeeded in obtaining it for the Súras. Ráhu, a demon under the disguise of a Súra, was about to drink it, when, informed of it by the sun and the moon, the god just mentioned, by a blow with his chakra, struck off the demon’s head, which, flying up to heaven, since keeps an inextinguishable hatred against the two luminaries who had betrayed him, and now and then swallows the sun or the moon.—A. T.