150 Captain Ton's Comments on a Sanscrit Inscription. 



She comes in a blaze of beauty, breathing perfumes, and covered with 

 garlands of flowers, which she throws over, and weds, the hero of her 

 choice, and carries him off in her embrace. The fatal sister of Scania, like 

 the daughter of Jove, descends armed cap-d-pied. She is beautifully de- 

 lineated by Herbert, in one of the most harmonious poems in our lan- 

 guage, Helga. 



Hialmar, relating to Orvarod his presentiments of approaching death in 

 battle, says : 



" [ see the stern Valkyriur nigh, 

 " All arm'd, and pointing to the sky: 

 " Virgins of fate, tliat chuse the slain, 

 " They bid me hence to Odin's train."* 



and the apotheosis, thus : 



" From the frail trunk of mortal clay 



" His spirit soars to brighter day ; 



" And these resplendent IVlaids of war, 



" Tiirough misty regions of mid air, 



" Where fleeting motions gleam and die, 



" Guide him to where, witli fixed eye, 



" Odin," &c. 



Odin's heroes, even in heaven, do not quit their terrestrial pursuits. 

 They eat of the boar, quaff the mead, and bluster, and riot, as they did 

 on earth. 



The bard Chand makes his choosers of the slain to descend with great 

 grace and fascination; and, though their agency is tangibly corporeal, and 

 suitable to the notions of a race of warlike mortals, yet, as the warrior as- 

 cends in the celestial cars above mortality, he casts off its grossness ; and 

 in proportion to his having lived well, and died nobly, does he approach 

 divinity. They have even grades of celestial felicity ; and though Chand 

 has not actually given us a topographical account of the different heroes' 

 heavens, yet we see the gradation from Vaicunt'ha, the paradise of IndtHiro- 

 which more accords with Valhalla, to the abode of the sun, the highest. 

 Indeed, without any great straining of etymology, we might give a Sanscrit 

 derivation of Odin's heaven.t 



* Helga, canto vi. 



f Vala, or Bal, is strength, whence the common term in Chand for a powerful warrior^ Bala 



or 



