40. Vidyavan, the ‘Man of Secrets or Knowledge,’ is the term used by way of reproach to the Jains, having the import of magician. Their opponents believe them to be possessed of supernatural skill; and it is recorded of the celebrated Amara, author of the Kosa or dictionary called after him, that he raculously’raculously’ “made the full moon appear on Amavas”—the ides of the month, when the planet is invisible.
41. Khadatara signifies ‘true’ [?], an epithet of distinction which was bestowed by that great supporter of the Buddhists or Jains, Siddharaj, king of Anhilwara Patan, on one of the branches (gachchha), in a grand religious disputation (badha) at that capital in the eleventh century. The celebrated Hemacharya was head of the Khadatara-gachchha; and his spiritual descendant honoured Udaipur with his presence in his visit to his dioceses in the desert in 1821. My own Yati tutor was a disciple of Hemacharya, and his pattravali, or pedigree, registered his descent by spiritual successions from him. [For the Jain gachchhas see Bühler, The Indian Sect of the Jainas, 77 ff. As usual, the author confounds Jains with Buddhists.] This pontiff was a man of extensive learning and of estimable character. He was versed in all the ancient inscriptions, to which no key now exists, and deciphered one for me which had been long unintelligible. His travelling library was of considerable extent, though chiefly composed of works relating to the ceremonies of his religion: it was in the charge of two of his disciples remarkable for talent, and who, like himself, were perfectly acquainted with all these ancient characters. The pontiff kindly permitted my Yati to bring for my inspection some of the letters of invitation written by his flocks in the desert. These were rolls, some of them several feet in length, containing pictured delineations of their wishes. One from Bikaner represented that city, in one division of which was the school or college of the Jains, where the Yatis were all portrayed at their various studies. In another part, a procession of them was quitting the southern gate of the city, the head of which was in the act of delivering a scroll to a messenger, while the pontiff was seen with his cortège advancing in the distance. To show the respect in which these high priests of the Jains are held, the princes of Rajputana invariably advance outside the walls of their capital to receive and conduct them to it—a mark of respect paid only to princes. On the occasion of the high priest of the Khadataras passing through Udaipur, as above alluded to, the Rana received him with every distinction.
42. So called from the town of Osi or Osian, in Marwar [about 30 miles N. of Jodhpur city].
43. Palitana, or ‘the abode of the Pali’ [?], is the name of the town at the foot of the sacred mount Satrunjaya (signifying ‘victorious over the foe’), on which the Jain temples are sacred to Buddhiswara, or the ‘Lord of the Buddhists’ [?]. I have little doubt that the name of Palitana is derived from the pastoral (pali) Scythic invaders bringing the Buddhist faith in their train—a faith which appears to me not indigenous to India [?]. Palestine, which, with the whole of Syria and Egypt, was ruled by the Hyksos or Shepherd kings, who for a season expelled the old Coptic race, may have had a similar import to the Palitana founded by the Indo-Scythic Pali. The Author visited all these sacred mounts. [The Author describes Pālitāna in WI, 274 ff.; see also BG, viii. 603 f. All this confusion between Buddhists and Jains and the suggested derivation, in which the Author unfortunately relied on Wilford (Asiatic Researches, iii. 72 ff., viii. 321), are out of date.]
44. [The Kīrtti-Stambha, erected by a merchant named Jīja in the twelfth century A.D., and dedicated to Ādināth, the first Jain Tīrthakara (Fergusson, Hist. Indian Architecture, ii. 57 ff.; Erskine ii. A. 104).]
45. [Buddhism and Jainism are again confused. For Buddhist remains in Rājputāna see IGI, xxi. 103.]
49. [This is the Pachusan, the four months of Jain retreat, the Vassa or Vassavāsa of the Buddhists. It was held in the rainy season, during which travelling was forbidden, in order to avoid injury to the insect life which abounds at this time (BG, ix. Part i. 113 f.; Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, 80 f.).]
50. Dwarka is at the point called Jagat Khunt, of the Saurashtra peninsula. Ka is the mark of the genitive case [?]: Dwarkanath would be the ‘gate of the god’ [‘Lord of Dvārakā’].
51. Fifty-seven descents are given, both in their sacred and profane genealogies, from Krishna to the princes supposed to have been contemporary with Vikramaditya. The Yadu Bhatti or Shama Bhatti (the Ahsham Bhatti of Abu-l Fazl) [Āīn, ii. 339], draw their pedigree from Krishna or Yadunath, as do the Jarejas of Cutch.
52. With Mathura as a centre and a radius of eighty miles, describe a circle: all within it is Vraj, which was the seat of whatever was refined in Hinduism, and whose language, the Vraj-bhasha, was the purest dialect of India. Vraj is tantamount to the land of the Suraseni, derived from Sursen, the ancestor of Krishna, whose capital, Surpuri, is about fifty miles south of Mathura on the Yamuna (Jumna). The remains of this city (Surpuri) the Author had the pleasure of discovering. The province of the Surseni, or Suraseni, is defined by Manu [Laws, ii. 19, vii. 193, who calls them Surasenakas], and particularly mentioned by the historians of Alexander.
53. Vindravana, or the ‘forests of Vindra,’ in which were placed many temples sacred to Kanhaiya, is on the Yamuna, a few miles above Mathura. A pilgrimage to this temple is indispensable to the true votary of Krishna.
54. This river is called the Kal Yamuna, or black Yamuna, and Kalidah or the ‘black pool,’ from Kanhaiya having destroyed the hydra Kaliya which infested it. Jayadeva calls the Yamuna ‘the blue daughter of the sun.’
55. [The popular worship of Krishna and Rādha is decidedly erotic.] It affords an example of the Hindu doctrine of the Metempsychosis, as well as of the regard which Akbar’s toleration had obtained him, to mention, that they held his body to be animated by the soul of a celebrated Hindu gymnosophist: in support of which they say he (Akbar) went to his accustomed spot of penance (tapasya) at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges, and excavated the implements, namely, the tongs, gourd, and deer-skin, of his anchorite existence. [For the tale of Akbar and the Brāhman Mukunda see Asiatic Researches, ix. 158.]
56. Ran, the ‘field of battle,’ chhor, from chhorna, ‘to abandon.’ Hence Ranchhor, one of the titles under which Krishna is worshipped at Dwarka, is most unpropitious to the martial Rajput. Kalyavana, the foe from whom he fled, and who is figured as a serpent, is doubtless the Tak, the ancient foe of the Yadus, who slew Janamejaya, emperor of the Pandus. [Kālyavana has been identified with Gonanda I. of Kashmīr, but was more probably one of the Bactrian chiefs of the Panjāb (Growse, Mathura, 3rd ed. 56).]
58. [The right of sanctuary was maintained until quite recent times (Erskine ii. A. 120).]
59. The cotton tree, Bombax malabaracum, which grows to an immense height.
60. Whoever has unhooded the falcon at a lapwing, or even scared one from her nest, need not be told of its peculiarly distressing scream, as if appealing to sympathy. The allusion here is to the lapwing scared from her nest, as the rival armies of the Kurus and Pandus joined in battle, when the compassionate Krishna, taking from an elephant’s neck a war-bell (viraghanta), covered the nest, in order to protect it. When the majority of the feudal nobles of Marwar became self-exiled, to avoid the almost demoniac fury of their sovereign, since his alliance with the British Government, Anar Singh, the chief of Ahor, a fine specimen of the Rathor Rajput, brave, intelligent, and amiable, was one day lamenting, that while all India was enjoying tranquillity under the shield of Britain, they alone were suffering from the caprice of a tyrant; concluding a powerful appeal to my personal interposition with the foregoing allegory, and observing on the beauty of the office of mediator: “You are all-powerful,” added he, “and we may be of little account in the grand scale of affairs; but Krishna condescended to protect even the lapwing’s egg in the midst of battle.” This brave man knew my anxiety to make their peace with their sovereign, and being acquainted with the allegory, I replied with some fervour, in the same strain, “Would to God, Thakur Sahib, I had the viraghanta to protect you.” The effect was instantaneous, and the eye of this manly chieftain, who had often fearlessly encountered the foe in battle, filled with tears as, holding out his hand, he said, “At least you listen to our griefs, and speak the language of friendship. Say but the word, and you may command the services of twenty thousand Rathors.” There is, indeed, no human being more susceptible of excitement, and, under it, of being led to any desperate purpose, whether for good or for evil, than the Rajput.
61. Chand, the bard, gives this instance of the compassionate nature of Krishna, taken, as well as the former, from the Mahabharata. [On Krishna worship see J. Kennedy, JRAS, October 1907, p. 960 ff.]
62. Near the town of Avranches, on the coast of Normandy, is a rock called Mont St. Michel, in ancient times sacred to the Galli or Celtic Apollo, or Belenus; a name which the author from whom we quote observes, “certainly came from the East, and proves that the littoral provinces of Gaul were visited by the Phoenicians.”—“A college of Druidical priestesses was established there, who sold to seafaring men certain arrows endowed with the peculiar virtue of allaying storms, if shot into the waves by a young mariner. Upon the vessel arriving safe, the young archer was sent by the crew to offer thanks and rewards to the priestesses. His presents were accepted in the most graceful manner; and at his departure the fair priestesses, who had received his embraces, presented to him a number of shells, which afterwards he never failed to use in adorning his person” (Tour through France).
When the early Christian warrior consecrated this mount to his protector St. Michel, its name was changed from Mons Jovis (being dedicated to Jupiter) to Tumba, supposed from tumulus, a mound; but as the Saxons and Celts placed pillars on all these mounts, dedicated to the Sun-god Belenus, Bal, or Apollo, it is not unlikely that Tumba is from the Sanskrit thambha, or sthambha, ‘a pillar’ [?].
63. [Pītāmbara.]
64. Hindupati, vulgo Hindupat, ‘chief of the Hindu race,’ is a title justly appertaining to the Ranas of Mewar. It has, however, been assumed by chieftains scarcely superior to some of his vassals, though with some degree of pretension by Sivaji, who, had he been spared, might have worked the redemption of his nation, and of the Rana’s house, from which he sprung.
66. Numbers, chap. xxxv. 11, 12.
67. Numbers, chap. xxxv. 25, and Joshua, chap. xx. 6. There was an ancient law of Athens analogous to the Mosaic, by which he who committed ‘chance-medley’ should fly the country for a year, during which his relatives made satisfaction to the relatives of the deceased. The Greeks had asyla for every description of criminals, which could not be violated without infamy. Gibbon [ed. W. Smith, iv. 377 f.] gives a memorable instance of disregard to the sanctuary of St. Julian in Auvergne, by the soldiers of the Frank king Theodoric, who divided the spoils of the altar, and made the priests captives: an impiety not only unsanctioned by the son of Clovis, but punished by the death of the offenders, the restoration of the plunder, and the extension of the right of sanctuary five miles around the sepulchre of the holy martyr.
68. [The chief sanctuaries in Rājputāna are: Nāgor; Barli, a few miles distant; Chaupāsni; Udaimandir and Mahmandir, close to Jodhpur. The system is a serious obstacle to the detection of crime (General Hervey, Some Records of Crime, i. 122 f., ii. 327 ff.).]
69. [Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed. i. 235.]
70. [iv. 33; L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. 101 ff.]
71. [Perā, a sweetmeat made of cream, sugar and spices, for which Mathura is famous.]
72. Pallas gives an admirable and evidently faithful account of the worship of Krishna and other Hindu divinities in the city of Astrakhan, where a Hindu mercantile colony is established. They are termed Multani, from the place whence they migrated—Multan, near the Indus. This class of merchants of the Hindu faith is disseminated over all the countries, from the Indus to the Caspian: and it would have been interesting had the professor given us any account of their period of settlement on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. In costume and feature, as represented in the plate given by that author, they have nothing to denote their origin; though their divinities might be seated on any altar on the Ganges. The Multanis of Indeskoi Dvor, or ‘Indian court,’ at Astrakhan, have erected a pantheon, in which Krishna, the god of all Vaishnava merchants, is seated in front of Jagannath, Rama, and his brothers, who stand in the background; while Siva and his consort Ashtabhuja ‘the eight-armed,’ form an intermediate line, in which is also placed a statue which Pallas denominates Murali; but Pallas mistook the flute (murali) of the divine Krishna for a rod. The principal figure we shall describe in his own words. “In the middle was placed a small idol with a very high bonnet, called Gupaledshi. At its right there was a large black stone, and on the left two smaller ones of the same colour, brought from the Ganges, and regarded by the Hindus as sacred. These fossils were of the species called Sankara, and appeared to be an impression of a bivalve muscle.” Minute as is the description, our judgment is further aided by the plate. Gupaledshi is evidently Gopalji, the pastoral deity of Vraj (from gao, a cow, and pala, a herdsman). The head-dress worn by him and all the others is precisely that still worn by Krishna, in the sacred dance at Mathura: and so minute is the delineation that even the pera or sugar-ball is represented, although the professor appears to have been ignorant of its use, as he does not name it. He has likewise omitted to notice the representation of the sacred mount of Govardhana, which separates him from the Hindu Jove and the turreted Cybele (Durga), his consort. The black stones are the Salagramas, worshipped by all Vaishnavas. In the names of ‘Nhandigana and Gori,’ though the first is called a lion saddled, and the other a male divinity, we easily recognise Nandi, the bull-attendant (Gana) of Siva and his consort Gauri. Were all travellers to describe what they see with the same accuracy as Pallas, they would confer important obligations on society, and might defy criticism. It is with heartfelt satisfaction I have to record, from the authority of a gentleman who has dwelt amongst the Hindkis of Astrakhan, that distance from their ancient abodes has not deteriorated their character for uprightness. Mr. Mitchell, from whose knowledge of Oriental languages the Royal Asiatic Society will some day derive benefit, says that the reputation of these Hindu colonists, of whom there are about five hundred families, stands very high, and that they bear a preference over all the merchants of other nations settled in this great commercial city.
73. Other travellers besides Pallas have described Hinduism as existing in the remote parts of the Russian empire, and if nominal resemblances may be admitted, we would instance the strong analogy between the Samoyedes and Tchoudes of Siberia and Finland and the Syama Yadus and Joudes of India [?]. The languages of the two former races are said to have a strong affinity, and are classed as Hindu-Germanic by M. Klaproth, on whose learned work, Asia Polyglotta, M. Rémusat has given the world an interesting critique, in his Mélanges Asiatiques (tome i. p. 267), in which he traces these tribes to Central Asia; thus approaching the land of the Getae or Yuti. Now the Yutis and Yadus have much in their early history to warrant the assertion of more than nominal analogy. The annals of the Yadus of Jaisalmer state that long anterior to Vikrama they held dominion from Ghazni to Samarkand: that they established themselves in those regions after the Mahabharata, or great war; and were again impelled, on the rise of Islamism, within the Indus. As Yadus of the race of Sham or Syam (a title of Krishna), they would be Sama-Yadus; in like manner as the Bhatti tribe are called Shama-bhatti, the Ahsham Bhatti of Abu-l Fazl. The race of Joude was existing near the Indus in the Emperor Babur’s time, who describes them as occupying the mountainous range in the first Duab, the very spot mentioned in the annals of the Yadus as their place of halt, on quitting India twelve centuries before Christ, and thence called Jadu or Yadu-ka-dang, the ‘hills of Jadu or Yadu.’ The peopling of all these regions, from the Indus to remote Tartary, is attributed to the race of Ayu or Indu, both signifying the moon, of which are the Haihayas, Aswas (Asi), Yadus, etc., who spread a common language over all Western Asia. Amongst the few words of Hindu-Germanic origin which M. Rémusat gives to prove affinity between the Finnish and Samoyede languages is “Miel, Mod, dans le dialecte Caucasien, et Méd, en Slave,” and which, as well as mead, the drink of the Scandinavian warrior, is from the Sanskrit Madhu, a bee [honey]. Hence intoxicating beverage is termed Madhva, which supplies another epithet for Krishna, Madhu or Madhava. [These speculations possess no value.]
74. Origin of Laws and Government.
75. Literally ‘the giver of food.’
76. Kanhaiya ka kantha bāndhna, ‘to bind on [the neck] the chaplet of Kanhaiya,’ is the initiatory step.
77. I had one day thrown my net into this lake, which abounded with a variety of fish, when my pastime was interrupted by a message from the regent, Zalim Singh: “Tell Captain Tod that Kotah and all around it are at his disposal; but these fish belong to Kanhaiya.” I, of course, immediately desisted, and the fish were returned to the safeguard of the deity. [The killing of fish at certain lakes and streams is forbidden on account of their harmlessness (ahimsā), and thus naturally associated with the cult of a gentle deity like Krishna, and because they are believed to contain the spirits of the dead (Stein, Rājatarangini, i. 185; Crooke, Things Indian, 221 ff.).]
78. A Nishan, or standard, is synonymous with a company.
79. Sheopur or Sivapur, the city of Sheo or Siva, the god of war, whose battle-shout is Har; and hence one of Vishnu’s epithets, as Hari is that of Krishna or Kanhaiya.
80. Radha was the name of the chief of the Gopis or nymphs of Vraj, and the beloved of Kanhaiya.
81. In October 1807 I rambled through all these countries, then scarcely known by name to us. At that time Sheopur was independent, and its prince treated me with the greatest hospitality. In 1809 I witnessed its fall, when following with the embassy in the train of the Mahratta leader. [It is now included in the Gwalior State (IGI, xxii. 271 f.).]
Hence the Jains, the chief sect of the Buddhists,[17] so called from adoring the spirit (Jina), were untinctured with idolatry until the apotheosis of Krishna,[18] whose mysteries superseded the simpler worship of Budha. Neminath (the deified Nemi) was the pontiff of Budha, and not only the contemporary of Krishna, but a Yadu, and his near relation; and both had epithets denoting their complexion; for Arishta, the surname of Nemi, has the same import as Syam and Krishna, ‘the black,’ though the latter is of a less Ethiopic hue than Nemi.[19] It was anterior to this schism amongst the sons of Budha that the creative power was degraded under sensual forms, when the pillar rose to Bal or Surya in Syria and on the Ganges: and the serpent, “subtlest beast of all the field,” worshipped as the emblem of wisdom (Budha), was conjoined with the symbol of the creative power, as at the shrine of Eklinga, where the brazen serpent is wreathed round the lingam.[20] Budha’s descendants, the Indus, preserved the Ophite sign of their race, when Krishna’s followers adopted the eagle as his symbol. These, with the adorers of Surya, form the three idolatrous classes of India, not confined to its modern [536] restricted definition, but that of antiquity, when Industhan or Indu-Scythia extended from the Ganges to the Caspian. In support of the position that the existing polytheism was unknown on the rise of Vaishnavism, we may state, that in none of the ancient genealogies do the names of such deities appear as proper names in society, a practice now common; and it is even recorded that the rites of magic, the worship of the host of heaven, and of idols, were introduced from Kashmir, between the periods of Krishna and Vikrama. The powers of nature were personified, and each quality, mental and physical, had its emblem, which the Brahmans taught the ignorant to adopt as realities, till the pantheon become so crowded that life would be too short to acquire even the nomenclature of their ‘thirty-three millions of gods.’[21] No object was too high or too base, from the glorious Orb to the Rampi, or paring-knife of the shoemaker. In illustration of the increase of polytheism, I shall describe the seven forms under which Krishna is worshipped, whose statues are established in the various capitals of Rajasthan, and are occasionally brought together at the festival of Annakuta at Nathdwara.
The international wars of the Suryas and the Yadu races, as described in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are lost between allegory and literal interpretation. The Suryas, or Saivas, were depressed; and the Indus, who counted ‘fifty-six’ grand tribes, under the appellations of Takshak, ‘serpent,’ Aswa, ‘horse,’ Sasa, ‘hare,’ etc., etc., had paramount sway. Krishna’s schism produced a new type, that of the eagle, and the wars of the schismatics were depicted under their respective emblems, the eagle and serpent, of which latter were the Kauravas and Takshaks,[22] the political adversaries of the Pandus, the relatives of Krishna. The [537] allegory of Krishna’s eagle pursuing the serpent Budha, and recovering the books of science and religion with which he fled, is an historical fact disguised: namely, that of Krishna incorporating the doctrines of Budha with his own after the expulsion of the sect from India. Dare we further attempt to lift the veil from this mystery, and trace from the seat of redemption of lost science its original source?[23] The Gulf of Cutch, the point where the serpent attempted to escape, has been from time immemorial to the present day the entrepôt for the commerce of Sofala, the Red Sea, Egypt, and Arabia. There Budha Trivikrama, or Mercury, has been and is yet invoked by the Indian mariners, especially the pirates of Dwarka. Did Budha or Mercury come from, or escape to the Nile? Is he the Hermes of Egypt to whom the ‘four books of science,’ like the four Vedas[24] of the Hindus, were sacred? The statues of Nemi,[25] the representative of Budha, exactly resemble in feature the bust of young Memnon.[26]
I have already observed that Krishna, before his own deification, worshipped his great ancestor Budha; and his temple at Dwarka rose over the ancient shrine of the latter, which yet stands. In an inscription from the cave of Gaya their characters are conjoined: “Hari who is Budha.” According to Western mythology, Apollo and Mercury exchanged symbols, the caduceus for the lyre; so likewise in India their characters intermingle: and even the Saiva propitiates Hari as the mediator and disposer of the ‘divine spark’ (jyoti) to its reunion with the ‘parent-flame’:—thus, like Mercury, he may be said to be the conveyer of the souls of the dead. Accordingly in funeral lamentation his name only is invoked, and Hari-bol! Hari-bol! is emphatically pronounced by those conveying the corpse to its final abode. The vahan (qu. the Saxon van?) or celestial car of Krishna, in which the souls (ansa) of the just are conveyed to Suryamandal, the ‘mansion of the sun,’ is painted like himself, blue (indicative of space, or as Ouranos), with the eagle’s head; and here he partakes of the Mercury of the [538] Greeks, and of Oulios, the preserver or saviour, one of the titles of Apollo at Delos.[27]