

SACRED BABOONS. l ^ l 



war upon the Rishis, says the chronicle of the Upani- 

 shads, the monkey Honuman offered his services to the 

 God of Light, and suggested the idea of carrying the war 

 into the enemy's country by setting fire to the island 

 of Ceylon. The success of this stratagem brought the 

 Ravan party to terms and re-established the suprem- 

 acy of the Rishis, but in the heat of the Ceylon fracas- 

 a-feu the faithful ally's tail caught fire, and he would 

 have expired in his own conflagration if he had not 

 saved himself by a hurried trip to the Himalaya high- 

 lands, where he quenched the flame in a sacred moun- 

 tain-lake, not, however, before his hands and face had 

 got badly singed. The verity of this miracle is attested 

 by the scriptural evidence of the Sama-Veda, and, as a 

 collateral proof, as our theologians would say, the honu- 

 man's face and hands are soot-black, and a tarn near the 

 sources of the Jumna is to this day called the Bhunder- 

 pouch, or Monkey-tail Lake. Nay, the Buddhists of 

 the Rayanate of Pegu in Ceylon claimed to possess an 

 eye-tooth of the veritable original Honuman. It is an 

 historical fact that in 1581 Constantine de Braganza, the 

 Virey of the Portuguese colonies, captured this tooth, 

 and that the Raya of Pegu offered him three hundred 

 thousand cruzadas for the restitution of the sacred relic. 

 The Virey hesitated, but his confessor insisted that the 

 tooth must be destroyed, "as its surrender would abet 

 idolatry, and probably witchcraft." 



The piety of the Hindoo shrinks from all familiarities 



