CiiAi'. vir.] 



THE FIXE ARTS. 



487 



England, France, and Flanders, adored a goat and a 

 goose, which they believed to be filled by the Holy 

 Spirit.' 



It is remarkable that the same word appears to desig- 

 nate the goose in the most remote quarters of the globe. 

 The Pali term " hanza " by which it was known to the 

 Buddhists of Ceylon, is still the " henza " of the Bur- 

 mese and the " gangsa " of the Malays, and is to be 

 traced in the " p^rji/ " of the Greeks, the " anser " of the 

 Eomans, the '' ganso'' of the Portuguese, the '' amar'' 

 of tlie Spaniards, the ''gans" of the Germans (who, 

 Pliny says, called the white geese ganza), the " gas " of 

 the Swedes, and the " gander " of the EngUsh.^ 



In the' principal apartment of the royal palace at 

 Kandy, now the official re- 

 sidence of the chief civil 

 officer in charge of the pro- 

 vince, the sacred bird occm^s 

 amongst the decorations, but 

 in such shape as to resemble 

 the dodo rather than the 

 Brahmanee goose. 



In the generality of the 

 examples of ancient Singha- 

 lese carvings that have come 

 down to us, the character- 



IN THE PALACE AT KANDY. 



1 Mill's Hist, of the Crusades, 

 vol. i. ch. ii. p. 75. Forster has sug- 

 gested tliat it was a species of goose 

 (which annualljf migrates from the 

 Blade Sea towards the south) that 

 fed the Israelites iu the desert of 

 Sinai, and that the " winged fowls " 

 meant by the word sahi, which has 

 been heretofore translated " quails/' 

 were " red geese," resembling those 

 of Egypt and India. He renders one 

 of the mysterious inscriptions which 

 abound in tlie Wady Mohatteb (the 

 Valley of Writinr/s), 'Hhe red geese 

 ascend from the sea, — lusting the 

 people eat to repletion ; " thus pre- 



senting a striking concurrence with 

 the passage in Numb. xi. .SI, "there 

 went forth a wind from tlie Lord and 

 brought quails (sahi) from the sea." 

 — Forster's One Primeval Lam/tiage, 

 vol. i. p. 90. 



^ Hardy observes that the ibis of 

 tlie Nile is called " Abou- Hanza ''^ by 

 the Arabs, (Buddhism, ch. i. p. 17) ; 

 but Bruce (Trav. vol. v. p. 172) says 

 tlie name is Abon Hannes, or JFather 

 John, and that the bird always ap- 

 pears on St. John's day : he implies, 

 however, that this is probably a cor- 

 ruption of an ancient name now 

 lost. 



I I 4 



