Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/417

Rh 27. Quoted by W. Taylor, in Journ. of As. Soc. vii. p. 391.

28. Quoted by Wilford, as above.

29. Quoted in Wilford's "Sacred Isles of the West."

30. Lassen.

31. Roth, Extrait du Vikrama-Charitram, p. 279.

32. Lassen, ii. p. 1154.

33. Lassen, ii. 1122–1129.

34. Abbé Huc narrates how enthusiastically the young Mongol toolholos, or bard, sang to him the Invocation of Timour, of which he gives the refrain as follows:—"We have burned the sweet-smelling wood at the feet of the divine Timour. Our foreheads bent to the earth, we have offered to him the green leaf of tea, and the milk of our herds. We are ready: the Mongols are on foot, O Timour!

Divine Timour, when will thy great soul revive?

Return! Return! We await thee, O Timour!"

35. See Note 11 to "Vikramâditja makes the Silent Speak."

1. Ardschi-Bordschi is a Mongolian corruption of King Bhoga. (Jülg.)

The name of Bhoga (also written Noe, Nauge, and Noza; the N having entered from a careless following of the Persian historian Abulfazl, n and b being only distinguished by a point in Persian writing; and the z through the Portuguese, who habitually rendered the Indian g thus) seems to have been almost as favourite an appellation as that of Vikramâditja itself, and pretty equally surrounded with confusion of fabulous incident.

The Bhoga were one of the mightiest dynasties of ancient India, and the name was given to the family on account of their unbounded prosperity; being derived from bhug = enjoyment. The most celebrated king of the race bore a name which in our own day has become associated with prosperous rule, Bhoga Bismarka, or Bhismarka, is celebrated in ancient Sagas for his resistless might in the field, and was also accounted the type of a prudent and far-sighted sovereign. Many glories are fabled of him which I have not space to narrate, and even he only reigned over a fourth part of the Bhoga.

The individual Bhoga, however, who is probably the subject of the present story, and the details of whose virtues and wisdom present particular analogies with the life of Vikramâditja is, comparatively