CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 349 



eastern Himalayas, where he extinguished the flames in a lake which 

 to this day bears the name of Bhunder-pouch, or Monkey-tail-pond a 

 fact which alone suffices to refute the sophisms of narrow-minded 

 skeptics (" Asiatic Researches," vol. xiv, p. 44). 



Crocodiles have a prescriptive right to our surplus of non-nitroge- 

 nous food, butter, goat-cheese, and the offal of the heretical meat- 

 shops. They are not divine, in a stricter sense, but "water-pure," 

 free from the taint of hereditary sin, and their merits are often re- 

 warded by a quasi-immortality, synchronistic with the duration of this 

 planet. Their peccadilloes must be condoned ; the slayer of a gavial, 

 or sacred saurian, is an enemy of the public, for his deed is apt to re- 

 sult in a general calamity. In Agra a Buddhistic Chinaman once ob- 

 tained the post of crocodile-warden, but was soon after arraigned for 

 criminal neglect. A party of foreigners had visited the tank, and a 

 couple of gavials followed them toward the gate, in quest of cold lunch, 

 according to the theory of the prosecution, while the strangers sus- 

 pected them of homicidal intents, and, finding the gate closed, re- 

 treated behind a tree and fired their pistols as fast as they could load. 

 The negligent warden at last interfered, but too late ; both crocodiles 

 had been fatally wounded, and one of the victims happened to be a 

 gavial, a most reverend, and, barring such accidents, immortal amphib- 

 ian that had inhabited the tank since the time of Menu. The counsel 

 for the defense not only denied the charge of neglect, but proved that 

 the prehistoric reptile had been imported not more than five years 

 before. The court dismissed the case, and the Chinaman volunteered 

 to pay half the costs, but the Brahmans never forgave him. He lost 

 his place and, like the Rev. Augustus Blauvelt, was accused of having 

 betrayed his master. 



The Koran contains some rather incomprehensible ordinances, un- 

 less Professor Sale should be right that Mohammed prescribed them 

 as preparatory exercises of faith. The founders of several monastic 

 orders seem also to have thought it necessary to strengthen the ortho- 

 doxy of their disciples by periodical renunciations of common sense, 

 but the Brahmans have carried this principle to an even greater length. 

 According to the Yagur-Veda, a spiritual-minded man should renounce 

 the world after following its ways long enough to see the son of his 

 son. To be quite safe, he had better go as soon as his hair begins to 

 get gray. A conscientious Sannyassi, or " renouncer," should make 

 his home in the forest, live upon fruits and edible leaves, and let his 

 hair grow. His tunic should consist of bark, his lower garments of 

 untanned antelope-skin. He must elevate his soul by the contempla- 

 tion of Brahm and humble his body by taking occasional rambles on 

 all-fours. This would be bad enough, but, in order to fulfill all right- 

 eousness, a Sannyassi must wear wet clothes in the cold, and pass the 

 midsummer noons between two blazing fires, in order to correct the 

 humors of his spirit. With a view of washing away his worldliness 



