1833.] A Legend of Himdlaya—by Calidasa. 349 
2k 
Next Srva’s late consort, pure Sati once nam’d, 
Who, towards her lov’d Lord with devotion inflam’d, 
ee ee 
ae 
Thy pitying sire beheld ; then straight 
In his strong windy grasp he bore 
Down to this briny depth, where fate 
Threatens these shelter’d wings no more. 
Here what is represented by Calidasa as the friendly act of Ocean, hiding the 
mountain under its waters,—is made by Valmiki the act of the God of Wind, 
hurrying the winged rock to the protecting depth,—and is therefore the subject 
of grateful acknowledgment to the Wind’s son. 
This catastrophe, (which may be perhaps paralleled in Northern mythology by 
THoR aiming his vengeful hammer at the Giants of the Mountains in mid-air, 
as told in the Eddaof Snorro, Fab. 11,) is not unfrequently alluded to in the legends 
of the Hindés. Thus in the Kasi-kanda of the Skanda-Purana there is a 
soliloquy of the great mountain Vindhya, fullof schemes of envy and ill-will against 
Méru, but suddenly recollecting and deploring his impotence to execute them 
when deprived of wings ; and bitterly regretting the wanton petulance of some 
one of his race of old that had provoked the Thunderer to this act of severe 
vengeance. 
WH ATAA THRaRay alae | 
aadia: war aa faarae fed 1 
St. 21. The voluntary burning of Sati, (whose name is here twice repeated 
Bat Wat, onceas an epithet “‘pwre’’ or “virtuous,”’ and again as the proper name, ) 
is among the best known and most constantly repeated tales of Hind& mythology ; 
and it is in memory of this that every self-devoted and self-immolating wife obtains 
the same sacred name of Sazé, i. e. in another spelling of that very common but 
often mis-applied term, is a Suttee. The case of the prototype differs materially, 
_ as we may here observe, from the posthumous devotion of her inuumerable imi- 
tators : the affront which she thus heroically resented was offered to her undying 
lord, Siva, by Daxa, son of Brahma, in omitting his distinguished son-in-law from 
an invitation to a grand Sacrificial feast, at which all the other deities were to be 
present. The daughter went, though unasked : but finding only a confirmed con- 
tinuance of the slight offered to her beloved husband, she threw herself into the 
flame and thus spoiled the sacrifice : upon which Siva, who had been comparatively 
indifferent to the preceding affront, avenged her death in the terrible form of 
Vira-Bhadra,—beheading his father-in-law (who was afterwards resuscitated with 
the head of a goat substituted for his own), and dispersing his guests: and the 
several places to which the limbs of Sati were dispersed, in his dance of mingled 
triumph and lamentation, obtained an equal sanctity, and were honoured with 
the same phallic symbol, as were those which received the several mangled remains 
of the Egyptian Osiris by the piety of his wife Isis. (Of these places called 
Gzwraifa, which are 51 in number, and held in peculiar veneration by the vo- 
taries of the Saktis, one distinguished one is at C4li-gh4t in the neighbourhood of 
this capital, which received the goddess’s fingers). 
