Page:The Downfall of the Gods (1911).pdf/359



1. (Pages 83 and 317.)

THE SWORD OF INDRA

weapon, which is still preserved in a shrine in the royal enclosure of the King of Kambodia, is said to have been presented to the first Khmer monarch of Angkor by the Thunder God himself. The wardens who serve in the sanctuary in which the Sword is kept, and who alone are suffered to touch the sacred weapon, are Brahmans—the last survivors of the race that once ruled over the Khmer empire. They live at the charges and under the protection of the King of Kambodia, who, in common with all his subjects, is a Buddhist. Only some six or eight inches of the blade, near the hilt, are exposed to the view of visitors to the little shrine; and the Sword, in which the mystic Spirit of the Land is popularly supposed to abide, is the object of immense veneration to all the natives of the country, who come from far and wide to make pilgrimage to it. So far as it was possible to form an opinion from the glimpse which was vouchsafed, the Sword was judged by the author to be very ancient. It appeared to be fashioned, not of steel, but of iron, and the elaborate carvings and the gold waterings which ornament its surface suggest Indian workmanship. The magnificent scabbard of carved gold is, on the other hand, certainly the work of an Indo-Chinese, probably of a Kambodian goldsmith.

A similar sword is worshipped as a god by the semi-savage hill-folk somewhere in the Hinterland of Annam; and to this, too, pious pilgrimage is made by the Buddhists of Kambodia. These journeys are