1833.} A Legend of Himalaya—by Caliddsa. 335 
5. 
* His tow’ring peaks, glowing with nearer sun’s heat, 
Are climb’d by the holiest devotees’ feet ; 
Who worshipping first the huge shades, downward thrown 
From clouds thickly circling the high mountain-zone, 
Thence higher advancing, are chill’d in its rain 
Of drenching white mist, ere the summit they gain. 
6. 
His snows soon effacing the marks, gory red, 
Where lions, fierce slayers of elephants, tread ;— 
SS A a 
BVaCIaAT: or colowrs of the mountain rock, to be merely red, (notwithstanding the 
9 
plural) is suspected by Mr. Wilson to be owing to the possible predominance of 
ammonite or copper ore in some of the strata of the Himdlaya. I cannot however 
persuade myself that either in the present passage, or in that of the Cloud Messen- 
ger, Caliddsa should have entertained the limited sense ascribed to him by his com- 
mentators,—since he has himself in another part of that poem (St. 60, 61, vv. 403 
—410 of Wilson’s translation) described expressly in powerful images, though still 
below the truth of nature, the mingled white, blue, grey, and black, of the rocky 
strata of the same stupendous mountain to which his Yaxa hero was there exiled. 
The reader may, if he will, compare our ancient poet’s description in these several 
places with what Mr. Fraser records in his Journal of a Tour to the Himalaya 
mountains (pp. 255, 317, 344, &c. &c. of the 4to. edition of 1820), respecting the 
intermixture of every diversity of hue, reflected from the variously stratified peaks. 
On every account, therefore, I prefer the most general meaning of the dhdtumatta 
here. 
Ibid. And evermore wearing, &c.—The meaning of these two last lines is con- 
veyed by Cdlidésa in as many words, Akéla-sandhydm iva, literally ‘like an even- 
ing-twilight out of its time :’” but the immediately understood import of the short 
Sanscrit compound could scarcely be evolved intelligibly in a less compass of 
English words, than in the metrical paraphrase I have given. 
St.5, 6. My Malayalim MS. transposes these two stanzas : but the order of all the 
Devanagari and Bengali MSS. and commentators, seems here decidedly preferable. 
St.5. The holiest devotees.—To the reports brought back by these holy pilgrims, 
(fa Sq: or perfect men, as they are here called, when they attain their object,) a large 
portion of the strange matters popularly credited and described by our bard as be- 
longing to this mountain, may be certainly ascribed : amongst them, the elevation 
above the region of frost and snow, of summits glowing with the more ardent heat 
of the approximated sun. See the note on St. 16. 
St. 6. The mountaineers, &c.—Properly the Kira’tas: for the name, though 
often used to denote merely a mountain woodsman and hunter, was originally the 
name of a tribe or nationon the N. W. of the Indian mountains, viz. the Kirrhade 
(Krd60da) of Ptolemy, or as it has been sometimes read Kirrhodeeis. In the In- 
stitutes of Manu (x. 43, 44,) these are enumerated along with some tribes of an 
undoubtedly Hindu origin, and others as undoubtedly foreign, (the Cambojas, the 
