Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/394

370 literally a lion-seat, stands for a throne; for the lion was the typical ruler. The fables always make him out as powerful, just, temperate, and willing to take the advice of others, but often deceived by his counsellors. The lion also gave its name to the island of Ceylon, which to the Greeks was known as Taprobane, from Tâmbapanni or Tâmrapani, the capital built by Vigaja, its first historical settler (said by the natives to come from tâmra, red, and pâni, hand, because he and his companions being worn out with fatigue on their arrival lay down upon the ground and found it made their hands red; but tamra (neut.) means also red sandal-wood, and parna is a leaf, which makes a more probable interpretation, but there is also another deriving from "a red swamp"). But this name passed quite out of use both among native and Greek writers in the early part of the first century. Ptolemy calls it Σαλικὴ, the Indian word being Sinhala, the Pali, Sîhala = "resting-place of the lion" (i.e. the courageous warriors, the companions of Vigaja). Kosmas has Σίελεδίβα = Sinhaladvipa, "the island Sinhala." In the writings of the Chinese pilgrims it is called Sengkiolo, which they render "lion's kingdom." In the southern dialects of India l is often changed into r, and thus in Marcellinus Ammianus we find the name has become Serendivus. Out of this came zeilau and our Ceylon. In our word "Singhalese" we have a plainer trace of the lion's share in the appellation.

The writers of the time of Alexander do not appear to have come across any authentic account of the tiger, and his people seem to have known it only from its skin bought as merchandize. Nearchos and Megasthenes both quite overstate its size, as "twice as big as a lion," and "as big as a horse." Augustus exhibited a tiger in Rome in the year 11 B.C., and that seems the first seen there. Claudius imported four. Pliny remarks on the extreme swiftness and wariness of the tiger and the difficulty of capturing him. His place in the fable world is generally as representative of unmitigated cruelty. The Pantcha-Tantra contains a tale, however, in which a Brahman, wearied of his existence by many reverses, goes to a tiger who has a reputation for great ferocity and begs him to rid him of his life. The tiger in this instance is so moved by the recital of the man's afflictions that he not only spares his life, but nurtures him in his den, enriching him also with the jewelled spoil of the many travellers who fall victims to his voracity. In the end, however, the inevitable fox comes in as a bad counsellor, and persuades him the Brahman is intending to poison him, and thus overcoming his leniency, induces him to break faith with the Brahman and devour him.

2. Dakinis were female evil genii, who committed all sorts of horrible