Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/427

Rh He desires it, and she forthwith furnishes a terrible army, and another, and another, till Visvamitra is quite undone, all his hosts, and allies, and children killed in the fray. Then he goes into the wilderness and prays to Mahâdeva, the great god, to come to his aid and give him divine weapons, spending a hundred years standing on the tips of his feet, and living on air like the serpent. Mahâdeva at last brings him weapons from heaven, at sight of which he is so elated that "his heroic courage rises like the tide of the ocean when the moon is at the full." With these burning arrows he devastates the whole of the beautiful garden surrounding Vasichta's dwelling. Vasichta, in high indignation at this wanton cruelty, raises his vadschra, the Brahma sceptre or staff, and all Visvamitra's weapons serve him no more. Then owning the fault he has committed in fighting against Brahma he goes into the wilderness and lives a life of penance a thousand years or two, after which he is permitted to become a Brahman.

9. Those who can see one and the same hero in the Sagas of Wodin, the Wild Huntsman, and William Tell, might well trace a connexion between such a legend as this and the working of the modern law of conscription. There is no country exposed to its action where such scenes as that described in the text might not be found. There have been plenty such brought under my own notice in Rome since this "tribute of blood," as the Romans bitterly call it, was first established there last year.

10. I have spoken elsewhere in these pages of the question of re-birth in the Buddhist system. Though not holding so cardinal a place as in Brahmanism the necessity for it remained to a certain extent. All virtues were recommended in the one case as a means to obtaining a higher degree at the next re-birth, and in the other the same, but less as an end, than as a means to earlier attaining to Nirvâna. Of all virtues the most serviceable for this purpose was the sacrifice of self for the good of the species.

11. Sinhâsana, lit. Lion-throne; a throne resting on lions, as before described in the text.

12. At the exercise of such heaven-given powers nature was supposed to testify her astonishment, and thus we are told of sacrifices and incense offered for the pacification of the same. (Jülg.)