Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/378



1. "Then he squeezed the mountain."

Dr. Rhys Davids, in his Buddhism, p. 198, translates (with reference to this passage) the Pâli word pîleti by "to open." I have never come across the verb in this sense. The corresponding term in Sanskrit does not mean "to open," but to squeeze, press, &c.

I have intentionally used the term squeezed because the essence or sap (as Dr. Davids calls it) was pressed out of the mountain like milk out of a cow (to use the old Hindû simile).

The mountain here alluded to in this story is Himavat or Himâlaya.

According to Hindu tradition it is recorded that when, in the reign of Prithu, gods, saints, &c. milked the earth of its various treasures, precious stones, herbs (with wonderful healing and renovating properties), &c. Himavat was selected as the calf or recipient of all these good things. (See Kumâra-sambhava, i. 2.)

In this way the mountain contained the essence of the earth's goodness, so that when Indra squeezed (or milked) the mountain he took from it the quintessence so to speak, the "cream of the cream" of the earth's produce. Nothing else, in Fact, would have been good enough or enduring enough to draw an everlasting figure of the hare upon the moon.

It is worth noticing that the author of the Kumâra-sambhava mentions a red mineral fluid (dhâtu-rasa) obtained from Himavat for writing letters on Bhurja-bark.

2. The moon is often called hare-marked in Hindû works. See Kathâ-Sarit-Sâgara, bk. x. ch. lxii; Hitopadesa (Johnson's translation, p. 75); Contemporary Review (May, 1881, p. 781).