[Footnote 6: Pronounce in three syllables _Shut-roon-jye_: it means,
_one who triumphs over his foes_. So again, in three syllables,
_Narasing_: which means, _man-lion_, alluding to one of Wishnu's
incarnations. (Europeans do not adequately realise that the short
final _a_, in Sanskrit, is always mute. They pronounce e.g. _Ráma_,
_Krishna_, as if the last letter were long. They are monosyllables.)]
[Footnote 7: "The menace prevented the deed," observes Gibbon, of a
would-be assassin of Commodus. That was also the error of the Germans,
in 1914.]
[Footnote 8: A heavenly musician.]
[Footnote 9: _Dharma_ does not mean religion in our sense of the word.
It means, for every man, that set of obligations laid on him by his
caste or status: thus everybody's _dharma_ is different.]
[Footnote 10: A crown prince. Palace intrigues were common in the old
Hindoo courts. Each wife thought of nothing but providing the heir to
the throne, if not by fair means, then by foul.]
[Footnote 11: Krishna, the lute-player, and flute-player, _par
excellence_. He resembles Odin in this particular.]
[Footnote 12: i.e. _the city of lotuses._ The final _a_ is mute.]
[Footnote 13: i.e. _a line of stars_; _a constellation_; _a star
intensified._]
[Footnote 14: That is to say, abandoned, dissolute: independence
being, in old Hindoo ears, a synonym for every possible species of
depravity.]
[Footnote 15: There is here an untranslatable play on _mánasa_ and
_manasi-já_ = a feminine god of love.]
[Footnote 16: There is no vulgarity in this idea: it is a poetical
degree in the scale of passion. An _abhisáriká_ is a lady so mastered
by her love that she cannot wait for her lover, but goes to him of her
own accord. There are all sorts of conditions laid down to regulate
her going: she must not go in broad daylight, but in a thunderstorm,
or dusk.]
[Footnote 17: _Láwanya_ means loveliness as well as salt.]
[Footnote 18: The exact equivalent, and indeed the only possible
translation of _kupanditá._]
[Footnote 19: This is due to the peculiar dress of Hindoo women, all
in one piece, and put on so that the edge that runs around the feet
afterwards runs up diagonally and winds around the whole figure. No
national costume was ever better calculated to set off the sinuosities
and soft grace of a woman's figure to advantage than the marvellous
simplicity of the _sarí_ which is nothing more than a very long strip
of almost anything you please.]
[Footnote 20: i.e. _the clever one_: a name, like Nipuniká, employed
in Hindoo plays to denote the qualities of a _grisette_: _Suzanne._]
[Footnote 21: _Anuraktámritam bálá wiraktá wisham ewa sá._]
[Footnote 22: A female door-keeper. This appears to have been
customary in old times. Runjeet Singh had a body-guard of women,
dressed like boys.]
[Footnote 23: The roots of these great figs "grow down" (hence their
name) from the branches, often coalescing with the trunks into the
most extraordinary shapes: it needs no imagination to see Dryads under
the bark: they are visible to the naked eye. The huge leaves and great
white blossom of the _shála_ make it one of the most beautiful of
earthly trees: as the champak is one of the most weird, like a great
candlestick of innumerable branches whose pale flower-cups grow out of
the end of its clumsy fingers without leaves.]
[Footnote 24: Durgá, _the inaccessible one_, is one of Párwatí's
innumerable names. It has reference to a mountain steep, with
accessory meanings, moral and theological.]
[Footnote 25: There are constant references in Hindoo poetry to
swinging, which is a national pastime in India, with a special
festival in its honour.]
[Footnote 26: Pronounce as a trisyllable: Haridás.]
[Footnote 27: The Indian women used to send little earthenware dishes,
with a lighted wick in their oil, floating down the Ganges, to
symbolise their children's lives. Perhaps they do it still: but all
these beautiful old superstitious practices are dying away, in the
light of "representative institutions." New lamps for old ones!]
[Footnote 28: That is Shrí, the Hindoo Aphrodite. Only those who have
studied Hindoo goddesses on the old temple walls, where they stand
with everlasting marble smiles in long silent rows, buried in the
jungles that encircle their deserted fanes, will enter into the
atmosphere of this strange description.]
[Footnote 29: _Daiwatam hi hayottamah_, says Somadewa: _a good horse
is a divine thing._]
[Footnote 30: The Hindoo Æsculapius. Ayurweda, the science of
medicine.]
[Footnote 31: A gem that attracts straws, presumably amber. It is
always employed by Hindoo poets as an equivalent of our _magnet._]
[Footnote 32: _i.e._ the mirage.]
[Footnote 33: That is, as if she were a character in a play, coming at
her cue. The phrase is common in the Hindoo plays.]
[Footnote 34: This is due to the coal-black stem, which gives to a
palm tree shorn of its head the look of a tumble-down smoke-grimed
chimney. Unshorn, leaning to the wind, it is the most graceful thing
in the world, especially seen against the setting sun.]
[Footnote 35: The great jewel on Wishnu's breast.]
[Footnote 36: Literally, with a _sáshtanganamaskara_: i.e. _with an
obeisance made by falling prostrate with the eight corners of the
body_, a form of profound reverence made as to a divinity.]