Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/381

Rh 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.

1. Here is one of the numerous instances where the Mongolian tale-repeater introduces into the Indian story details drawn to the life from the manners and customs around him of his own people. Compare with it the following sketch from personal observation in Mongolia, given in Abbé Huc's "Travels:"—"You sometimes come upon a plain covered with animation; tents and herds dotted all over it. It is a place whither the greater supply of water and the choicer pastures have attracted for a time a number of nomadic families; you see rising in all directions tents of various dimensions, looking like balloons newly inflated and just about to take flight; children with a sort of hod upon their backs run about collecting argols (dried dung for fuel), which they pile up in heaps round their respective tents. The women look after the calves, make tea in the open air, or prepare milk in various ways; the men, mounted on fiery horses, armed with a long pole, gallop about, guiding to the best pastures the great herds of cattle which undulate over the surrounding country like waves of the sea. All of a sudden these pictures, anon so full of animation, disappear. Men, tents, herds, all have vanished in the twinkling of an eye. You see nothing left behind but deserted heaps of embers, half-extinguished fires, and a few bones of which birds of prey are disputing the possession. Such are the sole vestiges that a Mongol tribe has just passed that way. The animals having devoured all the grass around, the chief gives the signal for departure, and all the herdsmen, folding their tents, drive their herds before them, no matter whither, in search of fresh pastures."

This nomadic life, characteristic of the Mongols, would seem never at any time to have entered into Indian manners and customs. Though in