240 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Oct. 



Hindus, during mourning for parents, generally have recourse to it. 

 Its name I take to be a corruption of Sambara. It is, of course, quite 

 a different thing from the Chamois skin which our syces take for the 

 true Sahara. I should notice that the authority quoted above 

 confounds the Sambar with the Gayal (Gavceus frontalis), but if the 

 alternative meaning given by me be accepted, the difficulty can be 

 got over. The eighth is evidently a striped antelope, perhaps the 

 Gazelle, but I cannot make it out. The last is the Mouse deer which 

 of all the Indian deer tribe is the only animal which has no horns. 

 Its congeners of Java and elsewhere, such as the Kanchil and the 

 Chevrotain, could not have been sufficiently known to come under the 

 enumeration of a Puranic. 



" Now for the Rishya, it must be evident from what has been said 

 about the Ena, that it cannot be the white-footed antelope, and of 

 antelopes we have only two others, the Kavine deer and the little 

 Quadricornis that could be said to be common, and neither of these 

 has a blue scrotum, which is said to be the peculiar characteristic of 

 the Rishya. I am disposed to think, however, that Raja Radhakanta's 

 reading of the Kalika Purana is not correct. I have been able to get 

 hold of only one MS. of the work, and it does not give the slokas 

 quoted, but judging from the fact of the first three animals, described 

 in them, having the colour of their pilage noted, I think the fourth 

 had likewise its general colour described, and not that of its scrotum. 

 The word used is nildndakah, which I strongly suspect is a mislection 

 of Nildngakah or the " blue-bodied ;" and if this conjecture be correct, 

 the Rishya would be the " blue-bodied" Nilgao, a large, fierce and 

 peculiarly uncommon animal, much better adapted to adorn a tale 

 than a tame little antelope. 



" The legend in the Aitareya Brahmana makes Usha = Dawn 

 assume the form of a red doe rohit, and Brahma, to enjoy her society, 

 should become a buck rohit;* but instead of that, he changes 

 himself into a Rishya, and this circumstance suggests an argument 

 in favour of my conjecture. The female of the Nilgao is of a red 

 brown colour, without any shading of blue over it, which is the 



* In the version of the myth given in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad Usha, 

 to conceal herself, successively assumed the forms of a cow, a mare, a female 

 ass, a she goat, a ewe, and other female animals down to a female ant, and 

 Prajapati followed her successively in the shape of males of those animals. 



