AAD) JOHN FRASER. 
others are visible representatives of the higher gods, and do their will ; 
they therefore correspond with the ‘dii minorum gentium’ of the Romans;. 
they are not themselves immortal or invincible; for they use the celestial 
_ nectar, ‘amrita,’ to keep them alive, and they are often in jeopardy at. 
the hands of giants; they are also represented as youths. All this agrees 
well with the Samoan notions about such things; for the $a-Tangaloa are 
young men, placed in authority in the lower heavens by the appointment 
of the supreme Tangaloa; there they feast on the celestial ‘taro’ and 
drink the celestial ‘kava’ cup, and in our present myth they are van- 
quished both in cunning and skill, and in prowess also, by the earth-born 
giants of Losi’s expedition. | 
Both of these poems acknowledge the power of the giants. The Boma- 
kavya, that is ‘ Boma-song,’ is written in the Kawi language of Java, but 
is of Indian origin. Boma (Bhauma) is the son of Vishnu and Prithivi 
(‘ Earth’), and, as earth-born, he is a ‘danava’ or demon, both in form 
and disposition. Along with other ‘danavas’ he wages war on Indra, 
conquers him and reduces him to dire distress; in this extremity one of. 
the higher gods interposes; but he has to lift Boma bodily from mother- 
earth in order to be able to kill him; for as often as Boma’s body touched 
the earth, his strength was renewed. 
So also in the Ramayana, Ravana, the giant king of Ceylon overpowers 
Indra. But he himself is afterwards conquered and killed by Rama, an 
incarnation of Vishnu. Rama, to accomplish this, became the son of an 
Indian king of the Solar dynasty, but still had half the nature of Vishnu. 
While yeta stripling, he assisted in routing a war band of the Rakshasas, 
a race of demons, and he, soon after, succeeded in bending a wonderful 
bow, and thus obtained the beautiful princess, Sita, in marriage. But 
the jealousy of his step-mother drove him into exile; and, while they were 
living in hiding in the forest, Sita was carried off by this same Ravana 
of Ceylon, himself a Rakshasa. Rama now makes an alliance with a 
monkey-king in India, whose son, Hanuman, discovers the place in Ceylon 
to which Sita had been carried. With an army of monkey warriors, Rama 
miraculously crosses the straits, and, entering Ceylon, conquers Ravana 
and his demons, cuts off Ravana’s head, recovers Sita, returns to his 
native dominions, and is made king there. Asa reward for his assistance, 
the monkey-king and his people got the tableland of India, the Dekkan, 
to possess. | 
This story of Rama has not much bearing on our myth, but there are © 
three ethnological analogies in it which deserve notice. 
