Page 292.--The picture of the childless wife setting forth to seek
Mahdeo, and resolving not to return till she has seen him, is one
which would find a parallel in some of the persons composing almost
every group of pilgrims who resort to the great shrines of Hindostan.
Any one who has an opportunity of quietly questioning the members of
such an assemblage will find that, besides the miscellaneous crowd of
idlers, there are usually specimens of two classes of very earnest
devotees. The one class is intent on the performance of some act of
ascetic devotion, the object of which is to win the favor of the
divinity, or to fulfill a vow for a favor already granted. The other
class is seeking "to see the divinity," and expecting the revelation
under one or other of the terrible forms of the Hindoo Pantheon. There
are few things more pathetic than to hear one of this class recount
the wanderings and sufferings of his past search, or the journeys he
has before him, which are too often prolonged till death puts an end
to the wanderer and his pilgrimage.
Page 294.--The "fire which does not burn" is everywhere in India one
of the attributes of Mahdeo.
In many parts of the Deccan are to be found shrines consecrated to one
of the local gods, who has been Brahminically recognized as a local
manifestation of Mahdeo, where the annual festival of the divinity
was, within the last few years, kept by lighting huge fires, through
which devotees ran or jumped, attributing their escape from burning to
the interposition of Mahdeo. Except in a few remote villages, this
custom, which sometimes led to serious accidents, has in British
territory been stopped by the police.
Page 298.--This story of the wonderful child who was found floating in
a box on a river is to be heard, with more or less picturesque local
variations, on the banks of every large river in India. Almost every
old village in Sind has a local tradition of this kind.
Page 305.--Most households in Calcutta can furnish recollections of
depredations by birds, at their nest-building season, similar to that
of the Ranee's bangles by the Eagles in this story. But the object of
the theft is generally more prosaic. I have known gold rings so taken,
but the plunder is more frequently a lady's cuff or collar, or a piece
of lace; and the plunderers are crows, and sometimes, but very rarely,
a kite.
Page 313.--Purwaris, or outcasts, who are not suffered to live within
the quarter inhabited by the higher castes, are very numerous in
Southern India, and a legend similar to this one is a frequent popular
explanation of their being in excess as compared with other classes of
the population.