CHAP. VII.] 



THE FINE AETS. 



487 



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

 goose, which they believed to be filled by the Holy 

 Spirit. 1 



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 " xyv " of the Greeks, the " anser " of the 

 Eomans, the "ganso" of the Portuguese, the "ansar" 

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

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

 the Swedes, and the " gander " of the English. 2 



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 occurs 

 amongst the decorations, but 

 so modelled 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- 



N THE PALACE AT KANDY. 



1 MILL'S Hist, of the Crusades, 

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

 gested that it was a species of goose 

 (which annually migrates from the 

 Black Sea towards the south) that 

 fed the Israelites in the desert of 

 Sinai, and that the " winged fowls " 

 meant by the word salu, which has 

 been heretofore translated " quails," 

 were " red geese," resembling those 

 of Egypt and India. He renders one 

 of the mysterious inscriptions which 

 abound m the Wady Mokatteb (the 

 Valley of Writings), " the red geese 

 ascend from the sea, lusting the 

 people eat to repletion j " thus pre- 



senting a striking concurrence with 

 the passage in Numb. xi. 31, " there 

 went forth a wind from the Lord and 

 brought quails (salu) from the sea." 

 FORSTER'S One Primeval Language, 

 vol. i. p. 90. 



2 HARDY observes that the ibis of 

 the Nile is called " Abou- Hanza " by 

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

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

 the name is Abou Hannes, or Father 

 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 4 



