Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/393

 were undergoing penance, not for their sins, but for copper coins; some were lying on their backs upon thorns, each with a child upon his breast, asking charity; one man was standing upon one leg, in meditation; he began his penance at sunrise, and ended it at sunset.

We rode down to the water's edge, and saw the Hindoos doing pooja to living cows. One man, the shawl over whose shoulders was tied to the end of the chādar, worn over the head by a woman, came to a cow, the woman following him; he took hold of the cow's tail in his hand, holding in it at the same time the sacred cusa-grass; the woman did the same; the Brahman muttered a prayer, which the man repeated; he then, followed by the woman, walked round the cow many times turning to the left, which having done a certain number of times, he whispered into the cow's right ear; the woman came to the same ear, and also whispered to the cow; which ceremony being accomplished, they were sent into the river to bathe at the junction. The rites I witnessed, are, I believe, a portion of the marriage ceremonies of the Hindūs. The cusa-grass is the poa cynosurides; almost every poem in Sanscrit contains allusions to the holiness of this grass. Some of the leaves taper to a most acute point; it is an Hindoo saying, speaking of a very sharp-minded man, "his intellects are as acute as the point of a cusa leaf."

Some of the marble images at the fair were very fine ones; the price demanded was three hundred rupees, or £30 a-piece.

I received a present this morning of a flying fox, an enormous bat with leathern wings; I had previously thought such creatures were mere fables; the one presented to me is a prepared specimen. The next day, I sent some sipahīs to shoot flying foxes; they found a number in a large tree, and killed two of them; they are such savage, but intelligent-looking animals, curious and wonderful, but disgusting creatures.

During the cold weather I gathered a handful of a very sweet-smelling air-plant on the Mahratta Bund; taking it home, I threw it on the top of a biar-tree (zizyphus jujuba) to see if it would really grow in the air; it died away, as I thought, and I forgot it; the other day, by chance, glancing at the biar-tree, I