1833.] A Legend of Himdlaya—by Caliddasa. 339 
Athwart their big foreheads,—a liquor distil 
Of milky white hue o’er each fir-covered hill : 
Whose well diffus’d fragrance makes every dark height 
And table-land, pregnant with od’rous delight. 
10. 
. All night on his herbs as innocuous fires blaze, 
The caves’ inmost chambers are pierc’d by their rays : 
Not trimm’d with oil they,—yet to spirits that rove 
In forests, enamour’d, the true lamps of love. 
frequent occurrence in Sanscrit poetry. It grows in abundance, as I am assured by 
my learned friend Dr. Wallich, in Nipal, and all the mountainous regions on the 
northern frontier, and contains much resinous matter, of a very fine and aromatic 
kind ; which might not unreasonably be supposed to flow abundantly from any 
wound or incision made in the tree: but as to the scratching elephants habi- 
tually performing that agreeable office, and earths and rocks reflecting the fra- 
grance thus imparted to them ; this he thinks may well be set down to the imagi- 
nation of the poet, or of those whom he is here content to follow. (Of the friction 
of the elephants, compare the notes on St. 6 and St. 15.) 
St.10. All night on his herbs, &c.—What is here meant by C4liddsa is not, 
(as might be at first sight supposed) a spontaneous ignition of herbs. by friction 
often issuing in the conflagration of forests,—a common subject of description in 
Indian poetry, though little accordant with the circumstances annexed to the fires 
in this stanza. It refers to /ambent fires, like those described in Lucan’s mys- 
terious Druidical forest near Marseilles, (Pharsalia iii. 420). 
—non ardentis fulgere incendia silve— 
or those of Argolis in Seneca’s Thyestes, Act, IV. (where though the terms are just 
opposite, the meaning is precisely the same) 
Tota solet 
Micare flamma silva, et excelse trabes 
Ardent sine igni— 
or like those by which, in the special prodigy manifested in the commission 
of the Hebrew legislator at Horeb, (Exod. ii.) the plant “ flames, but is not 
consumed.”’ The authority given by the two commentators whom I have consulted 
on this poem, for enumerating this among phenomena of constant occurrence, is 
simply the Agama or Tantra, the Indian Cabbala, venerated scarcely less than 
the Nigama or Vedas themselves, by the votaries of Siva and of his 
female energies or Sactis. The passage thus cited from the Agama (without 
further particularity of reference) is given by Mallin4tha as follows: Ti @laTq 
ate ast faura cface arfa i.e. The sun when he has deposited his rays for 
the night with the deciduous herbs, goes tohis setting.’”? And thence a friendly 
acquaintance, endeared by occasional absences, is established between the herbs 
and the rays to which they are nightly attached, of which poetical fable our 
author makes a very elegant use in the 30th stanza of this book. 
