1. Milk-broth is mentioned by Abbé Huc repeatedly in his travels as
a staple article of food in Mongolia.
2. Schimnu or Schumnu (in Sanskrit, Kâma or Mâra) is the Buddhist
Devil, or personified evil. He is also the God of Love, Sin, and
Death, the Prince of the third or lower world. Sensuality is called
his kingdom. The Schumnus are represented as tempters and doing all
in their power to hinder mortals in their struggle after perfection,
and in this view, take every sort of forms according to their design
at the time. They as often appear in female as in male form. Schmidt's
translation of sSanang sSetsen.
3. As an instance of the migration of myths, I may mention here,
that I met in Spain with a ballad, which I am sorry I have mislaid
and cannot therefore quote the verse, in which the love-lorn swain in
singing the praises of his mistress, among other charms enumerates,
that the flowers spring from the stones as she treads her way through
the streets.
The present story, too, reminds forcibly in all its leading details of
the legend I have entitled "The Ill-tempered Princess," in "Patrañas,"
though so unlike in the dénouement.
4. I have had occasion to speak in another place of the early
Indian's belief in the dwelling of the gods being situated among
the inaccessible heights which bound his sight and his fancy. The
mountain of Meerû was a spot so sacred that it was fabled the sun
might not pass it. Consult Lassen, i. 847, &c. &c.
5. Churmusta = Indra. The ruler of the lower gods, king of the earth
and of the spirits of the air; his heaven is the place of earthly
pleasures. Dæmons often go to war with him to obtain entrance into
his paradise, and he can only fight them through the agency of an
earthly hero (Brockhaus, Somadeva Bhatta, i. 213); hence it is that
he calls Massang to fight the Schimnu-Khan for him.
According to Abbé Huc's spelling, Hormoustha.