Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/387

Rh titles of Krishna, when he carries a banner bearing a palm-tree in memory of a legend which makes him the discoverer of the means of utilizing the fruit of the cocoa-nut palm. "The mountain Gôvardhana on the banks of the Jamunâ was thickly grown over with the cocoa-nut palm, but it was kept in guard by a dæmon, named Dhênuka, in the form of an ass, at the head of a great herd of asses, so that no one could approach it. Krishna, however, in company with Rama, went through the wood unarmed, but when they would have shaken down the fruit from the trees, Dhênuka, who was sitting in its branches, kicked them with his hoofs and bit them. Krishna pulled him down from off the tree, and wrestled with him till he had crushed him to death; in the same way he dealt with the whole herd. A lurid light gleamed through the whole wood from the bodies of the dead asses, but from that time forward, all the people had free use of the trees." (Hari, v. 70, v. 3702 et seq. p. 577.)

3. The brandy spoken of is, probably, koumis, distilled from mare's milk, and makes a very intoxicating drink. Concerning its preparation, see Pallas, Sammlung historischer Nachrichten über die Mongolen.

1. Compare note 10, Tale IV.

2. Legends of transformed maidens being delivered from the power of enchantment and married by heroes and knights are common enough, but we less frequently meet with stories presenting a reversed plot. I have met with one, however, nearly identical with that given in the text, attached to a ruined castle of Wâlsch-Tirol.

3. The Buddhist idea of the soul is very difficult to define. In other legends given later in the present volume (e. g. the episode of the burying of Vikramâdtja's body and the action of the fourth youth in "Who invented Women?") we find it, just as in the present one, spoken of as a quite superfluous and fantastic adjunct without which a man was to all intents and purposes the same as when he had it. Spence Hardy affirms as the result of conversations with Buddhists during half a life passed among them in Ceylon, as well as from the study of their writings, that "according to Buddhism there is no soul."

4. Compare note 7 to "Vikramâditja's Birth."

5. Obö. "A heap of stones on which every traveller is expected of