Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/386

362 human sacrifices. Nevertheless, one of the grandest episodes of the great epic poem called the Ramajana, is that in which King Ashokja goes all the world over in search of a youth possessing all the marks which prove him worthy to be sacrificed: "wandering through tracts of country and villages, through town and wilderness alike, holy hermitages also of high fame." When at last he has found one in the person of Sunasepha, son of Ritschika, a great prince of seers, Visvamitra, the great model penitent, calls on his own son to take his place, crying up the honour of the thing in the most ardent language. "When a father desires to have sons," he says to him, "it is in order that they may adorn the world with their virtue and be worthy of eternal fame. The opportunity for earning that fame has now come to thee." And when his son refuses the exchange, he pronounces on him the following curse, "Henceforth shalt thou be for many years a wanderer and outcast, and despised like to a dealer in dog's flesh."

Concerning the serpent-cultus in general, see note 1, Tale II., and note 4, Tale XXII.

8. Rice is the most ancient and most widespread object of Indian agriculture; it is only not cultivated in those districts where either the heat or the means of natural or artificial irrigation do not suffice for its production; and in easternmost islands of the Archipelago, where the sago-palm replaces it. (Ritter iv. 1, 800.) The name, coming from vrih, to grow, to spread (whence also vrihat, great), suggests that it was regarded as the principal kind of corn. All the Greek writers on India mention that an intoxicating drink was made from rice, and the custom still prevails.

1. Brschiss. I know not what country it is which is thus designated, unless the word be derived from brizi, the ancient Persian for rice, and is intended to denote a rice-producing territory.

2. Palm-tree. India grows a vast number of varieties of the palm-tree; the general name is trinadruma, "grass-tree" (Ritter iv. 1, 827). The date-palm was only introduced by the Arabians (Lassen, iii. 312). The fan-palm (borassus flabelliformis) is called trinarâga = "the grass-king," in Sanskrit also tâla; the Buddhist priests in Dekhan and also in China and Mongolia use its leaves as fans and sunshades, and hence are often called tâlapatri, palm-bearers. Tâlânka and Tâladhvaga are also