3. "The custom of requiring women to go abroad veiled was only
introduced after the Mussulman invasion, and was nearly the only
important circumstance in which Muhammedan influenced Indian
manners." See Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, iii. p. 1157. In
Mongolia, however, Abbé Huc found that women have completely preserved
their independence. "Far from being kept down as among other Asiatic
nations they come and go at pleasure, ride out on horseback, and
pay visits to each other from tent to tent. In place of the soft
languishing physiognomy of the Chinese women, they present in their
bearing and manners a sense of power and free will in accordance with
their active life and nomad habits. Their attire augments the effect
of their masculine haughty mien."
In chapter v. of vol. ii., however, he tells of a custom prevailing
in part of Tibet of a much more objectionable nature than the use
of a veil:--"Nearly 200 years ago the Nome-Khan, who ruled over
Hither-Tibet, was a man of rigid manners.... To meet the libertinism
prevailing at his day he published an edict prohibiting women from
appearing in public otherwise than with their faces bedaubed with
a hideous black varnish.... The most extraordinary circumstance
connected with it is that the women are perfectly resigned to
it.... The women who bedaub their faces most disgustingly are deemed
the most pious.... In country places the edict is still observed with
exactitude, but at Lha-Ssa it is not unusual to meet women who set it
at defiance, ... they are, however, unfavourably regarded. In other
respects they enjoy great liberty. Instead of vegetating prisoners
in the depths of their houses they lead an active and laborious
life.... Besides household duties, they concentrate in their own
hands all the retail trade of the country, and in rural districts
perform most of the labours of agriculture."
4. Schalû. In another version of the legend he is called Sakori, the
soothsayer, because he made these predictions. (Journal of As. Soc. of
Bengal, vi. 350, in a paper by Lieut. W. Postans.)
5. The wolf-nurtured prince has a prominent place in Mongolian
chronicles. Their dynasty was founded by Bürte-Tschinoa = the Wolf
in winter-clothing. See I. J. Schmidt's Die Völker Mittel-Asiens,
vorzüglich die Mongolen und Tibeter, St. Petersburg, 1824, pp. 11-18,
33 et seq.; 70-75; and sSanang sSetsen, 56 and 372.
6. I cannot forbear reference to notices of such sudden storms and
inundations in Mongolia made from personal experience by Abbé Huc
"Travels in China and Tartary," chapters vi. and vii.
7. The persistent removal of the child after such tender entreaties and
such faithful unrequited service carries an idea of heartlessness, but
in extenuation it should be mentioned that while the Indians honoured
every kind of animal by reason of their doctrine of metempsychosis,
the wolf was just the only beast with which they seem to have had
no sympathy, and they reckoned the sight of one brought ill-luck, a
prejudice probably derived from the days of their pastoral existence
when their approach was fraught with so much danger to their flocks. In
Mongolia, where the pastoral mode of life still continues in vogue,
the dread of the wolf was not likely to have diminished. Thus Abbé
Huc says, "Although the want of population might seem to abandon the
interminable deserts of Tartary to wild beasts, wolves are rarely met,
owing to the incessant and vindictive warfare the Mongolians wage
against them. They pursue them every where to the death, regarding
them as their capital enemy on account of the great damage they may
inflict upon their flocks. The announcement that a wolf has been
seen is a signal for every one to mount his horse ... the wolf in
vain attempts to flee in every direction; it meets horsemen from
every side. There is no mountain so rugged that the Tartar horses,
agile as goats, cannot pursue it. The horseman who has caught it
with his lasso gallops off, dragging it behind, to the nearest tent;
there they strongly bind its muzzle, so that they may torture it
securely, and by way of finale skin it alive. In summer the wretched
brute will live in this condition several days; in winter it soon
dies frozen." The wolf seems fully to return the antipathy, for
(chapter xi.) he says, "It is remarkable wolves in Mongolia attack
men rather than animals. They may be seen sometimes passing at full
gallop through a flock of sheep in order to attack the shepherd."
8. Tschin-tâmani, Sanskrit, "thought-jewel," a jewel having the magic
power of supplying all the possessor wishes for. Indian fable writers
revel in the idea of the possession of a talisman which can satisfy
all desire. The grandest and perhaps earliest remaining example of it
occurs in the Ramajana, where King Visvamitra = the universal friend,
who from a Xatrija (warrior caste) merited to become a Brahman, visits
Vasichtha, the chief of hermits, and finds him in possession of Sabala,
a beautiful cow, which has the quality of providing Vasichtha with
every thing whatever he may wish for. He wants to provide a banquet
for Visvamitra, and he has only to tell Sabala to lay the board with
worthy food, with food according to the six kinds of taste and drinks
worthy of a king of the world. She immediately provides sugar, and
honey, and rice, maireja or nectar, and wine, besides all manner of
other drinks and various kinds of food heaped up like mountains; sweet
fruits, and cakes, and jars of milk; all these things Sabala showered
down for the use of the hosts who accompanied Visvamitra. Visvamitra
covets the precious cow, and offers a hundred thousand cows of earth in
barter for her. But Vasichtha refuses to part with her for a hundred
million other cows or for fulness of silver. The king offers him
next all manner of ornaments of gold, fourteen thousand elephants,
gold chariots with four white steeds and eight hundred bells to them,
eleven thousand horses of noble race, full of courage, and a million
cows. The seer still remaining deaf to his offers the king carries
her off by force.
The heavenly cow, however, in virtue of her extraordinary qualities,
helps herself out of the difficulty. It is her part to fulfil her
master's wishes, and as it is his wish to have her by him she
gallops back to him, knocking over the soldiers of the earthly
king by hundreds in her career. Returned to her master, the Brahman
hermit, she reproaches him tenderly for letting her be removed by the
earthly king. He answers her with equal affection, explaining that
the earthly king has so much earthly strength that it is vain for
him to resist him. At this Sabala is fired with holy indignation. She
declares it must not be said that earthly power should triumph over
spiritual strength. She reminds him that the power of Brahma, whom
he represents, is unfailing in might, and begs him only to desire of
her that she should destroy the Xatrija's host. He desires it, and
she forthwith furnishes a terrible army, and another, and another,
till Visvamitra is quite undone, all his hosts, and allies, and
children killed in the fray. Then he goes into the wilderness and
prays to Mahâdeva, the great god, to come to his aid and give him
divine weapons, spending a hundred years standing on the tips of his
feet, and living on air like the serpent. Mahâdeva at last brings
him weapons from heaven, at sight of which he is so elated that
"his heroic courage rises like the tide of the ocean when the moon
is at the full." With these burning arrows he devastates the whole
of the beautiful garden surrounding Vasichta's dwelling. Vasichta,
in high indignation at this wanton cruelty, raises his vadschra,
the Brahma sceptre or staff, and all Visvamitra's weapons serve him
no more. Then owning the fault he has committed in fighting against
Brahma he goes into the wilderness and lives a life of penance a
thousand years or two, after which he is permitted to become a Brahman.
9. Those who can see one and the same hero in the Sagas of Wodin, the
Wild Huntsman, and William Tell [72], might well trace a connexion
between such a legend as this and the working of the modern law of
conscription. There is no country exposed to its action where such
scenes as that described in the text might not be found. There have
been plenty such brought under my own notice in Rome since this
"tribute of blood," as the Romans bitterly call it, was first
established there last year.
10. I have spoken elsewhere in these pages of the question of rebirth
in the Buddhist system. Though not holding so cardinal a place as in
Brahmanism the necessity for it remained to a certain extent. All
virtues were recommended in the one case as a means to obtaining a
higher degree at the next re-birth, and in the other the same, but
less as an end, than as a means to earlier attaining to Nirvâna. Of
all virtues the most serviceable for this purpose was the sacrifice
of self for the good of the species.
11. Sinhâsana, lit. Lion-throne; a throne resting on lions, as before
described in the text.
12. At the exercise of such heaven-given powers nature was supposed
to testify her astonishment, and thus we are told of sacrifices and
incense offered for the pacification of the same. (Jülg.)