Читать книгу Creatures of the Night (Boxed Set Edition) - Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг - Страница 79

142. [ A low caste Hindu, who catches and exhibits snakes and performs other such mean offices.]

143. [ Meaning, in spite of themselves.]

144. [ When the moon is in a certain lunar mansion, at the conclusion of the wet season.]

145. [ In Hindustan, it is the prevailing wind of the hot weather.]

146. [ Vishnu, as a dwarf, sank down into and secured in the lower regions the Raja Bali, who by his piety and prayerfulness was subverting the reign of the lesser gods; as Ramachandra he built a bridge between Lanka (Ceylon) and the main land; and as Krishna he defended, by holding up a hill as an umbrella for them, his friends the shepherds and shepherdesses from the thunders of Indra, whose worship they had neglected.]

147. [ The priestly caste sprang, as has been said, from the noblest part of the Demiurgus; the three others from lower members.]

148. [ A chew of betel leaf and spices is offered by the master of the house when dismissing a visitor.]

149. [ Respectable Hindus say that receiving a fee for a daughter is like selling flesh.]

150. [ A modern custom amongst the low caste is for the bride and bridegroom, in the presence of friends, to place a flower garland on each other’s necks, and thus declare themselves man and wife. The old classical Gandharva-lagan has been before explained.]

151. [ Meaning that the sight of each other will cause a smile, and that what one purposes the other will consent to.]

152. [ This would be the verdict of a Hindu jury.]

153. [ Because stained with the powder of Mhendi, or the Lawsonia inermis shrub.]

154. [ Kansa’s son: so called because the god Shiva, when struck by his shafts, destroyed him with a fiery glance.]

155. [ “Great Brahman”; used contemptuously to priests who officiate for servile men. Brahmans lose their honour by the following things: By becoming servants to the king; by pursuing any secular business; by acting priests to Shudras (serviles); by officiating as priests for a whole village; and by neglecting any part of the three daily services. Many violate these rules; yet to kill a Brahman is still one of the five great Hindu sins. In the present age of the world, the Brahman may not accept a gift of cows or of gold; of course he despises the law. As regards monkey worship, a certain Rajah of Nadiya is said to have expended 10,000L in marrying two monkeys with all the parade and splendour of the Hindu rite.]

156. [ The celebrated Gayatri, the Moslem Kalmah.]

157. [ Kama again.]

158. [ From “Man,” to think; primarily meaning, what makes man think.]

159. [ The Cirrhadae of classical writers.]

160. [ The Hindu Pluto; also called the Just King.]

161. [ Yama judges the dead, whose souls go to him in four hours and forty minutes; therefore a corpse cannot be burned till after that time. His residence is Yamalaya, and it is on the south side of the earth; down South, as we say. (I, Sam. xxv. 1, and xxx. 15). The Hebrews, like the Hindus, held the northern parts of the world to be higher than the southern. Hindus often joke a man who is seen walking in that direction, and ask him where he is going.]

162. [ The “Ganges,” in heaven called Mandakini. I have no idea why we still adhere to our venerable corruption of the word.]

163. [ The fabulous mountain supposed by Hindu geographers to occupy the centre of the universe.]

164. [ The all-bestowing tree in Indra’s Paradise which grants everything asked of it. It is the Tuba of Al-Islam and is not unknown to the Apocryphal New Testament.]

165. [ “Vikramaditya, Lord of the Saka.” This is prevoyance on the part of the Vampire; the king had not acquired the title.]

166. [ On the sixth day after the child’s birth, the god Vidhata writes all its fate upon its forehead. The Moslems have a similar idea, and probably it passed to the Hindus.]

167. [ Goddess of eloquence. “The waters of the Saraswati” is the classical Hindu phrase for the mirage.]

168. [ This story is perhaps the least interesting in the collection. I have translated it literally, in order to give an idea of the original. The reader will remark in it the source of our own nursery tale about the princess who was so high born and delicately bred, that she could discover the three peas laid beneath a straw mattress and four feather beds. The Hindus, however, believe that Sybaritism can be carried so far; I remember my Pandit asserting the truth of the story.]

169. [ A minister. The word, as is the case with many in this collection, is quite modern Moslem, and anachronistic.]

170. [ The cow is called the mother of the gods, and is declared by Brahma, the first person of the triad, Vishnu and Shiva being the second and the third, to be a proper object of worship. “If a European speak to the Hindu about eating the flesh of cows,” says an old missionary, “they immediately raise their hands to their ears; yet milkmen, carmen, and farmers beat the cow as unmercifully as a carrier of coals beats his ass in England.” The Jains or Jainas (from ji, to conquer; as subduing the passions) are one of the atheistical sects with whom the Brahmans have of old carried on the fiercest religious controversies, ending in many a sanguinary fight. Their tenets are consequently exaggerated and ridiculed, as in the text. They believe that there is no such God as the common notions on the subject point out, and they hold that the highest act of virtue is to abstain from injuring sentient creatures. Man does not possess an immortal spirit: death is the same to Brahma and to a fly. Therefore there is no heaven or hell separate from present pleasure or pain. Hindu Epicureans!—“Epicuri de grege porci.”]

171. [ Narak is one of the multitudinous places of Hindu punishment, said to adjoin the residence of Ajarna. The less cultivated Jains believe in a region of torment. The illuminati, however, have a sovereign contempt for the Creator, for a future state, and for all religious ceremonies. As Hindus, however, they believe in future births of mankind, somewhat influenced by present actions. The “next birth” in the mouth of a Hindu, we are told, is the same as “to-morrow” in the mouth of a Christian. The metempsychosis is on an extensive scale: according to some, a person who loses human birth must pass through eight millions of successive incarnations—fish, insects, worms, birds, and beasts—before he can reappear as a man.]

172. [ Jogi, or Yogi, properly applies to followers of the Yoga or Patanjala school, who by ascetic practices acquire power over the elements. Vulgarly, it is a general term for mountebank vagrants, worshippers of Shiva. The Janganis adore the same deity, and carry about a Linga. The Sevras are Jain beggars, who regard their chiefs as superior to the gods of other sects. The Sannyasis are mendicant followers of Shiva; they never touch metals or fire, and, in religious parlance, they take up the staff They are opposed to the Viragis, worshippers of Vishnu, who contend as strongly against the worshippers of gods who receive bloody offerings, as a Christian could do against idolatry.]

173. [ The Brahman, or priest, is supposed to proceed from the mouth of Brahma, the creating person of the Triad; the Khshatriyas (soldiers) from his arms; the Vaishyas (enterers into business) from his thighs; and the Shudras, “who take refuge in the Brahmans,” from his feet. Only high caste men should assume the thread at the age of puberty.]

174. [ Soma, the moon, I have said, is masculine in India.]

175. [ Pluto.]

176. [ Nothing astonishes Hindus so much as the apparent want of affection between the European parent and child.]

177. [ A third marriage is held improper and baneful to a Hindu woman. Hence, before the nuptials they betroth the man to a tree, upon which the evil expends itself, and the tree dies.]

178. [ Kama]

179. [ An oath, meaning, “From such a falsehood preserve me, Ganges!”]

180. [ The Indian Neptune.]

181. [ A highly insulting form of adjuration.]

182. [ The British Islands—according to Wilford.]

183. [ Literally the science (veda) of the bow (dhanush). This weapon, as everything amongst the Hindus, had a divine origin: it was of three kinds—the common bow, the pellet or stone bow, and the crossbow or catapult.]

184. [ It is a disputed point whether the ancient Hindus did or did not know the use of gunpowder.]

185. [ It is said to have discharged balls, each 6,400 pounds in weight.]

186. [ A kind of Mercury, a god with the head and wings of a bird, who is the Vahan or vehicle of the second person of the Triad, Vishnu.]

187. [ The celebrated burning springs of Baku, near the Caspian, are so called. There are many other “fire mouths.”]

188. [ The Hindu Styx.]

189. [ From Yaksha, to eat; as Rakshasas are from Raksha, to preserve.—See Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism, p. 57.]

190. [ Shiva is always painted white, no one knows why. His wife Gauri has also a European complexion. Hence it is generally said that the sect popularly called “Thugs,” who were worshippers of these murderous gods, spared Englishmen, the latter being supposed to have some rapport with their deities.]

191. [ The Hindu shrine is mostly a small building, with two inner compartments, the vestibule and the Garbagriha, or adytum, in which stands the image.]

192. [ Meaning Kali of the cemetery (Smashana); another form of Durga.]

193. [ Not being able to find victims, this pleasant deity, to satisfy her thirst for the curious juice, cut her own throat that the blood might spout up into her mouth. She once found herself dancing on her husband, and was so shocked that in surprise she put out her tongue to a great length, and remained motionless. She is often represented in this form.]

194. [ This ashtanga, the most ceremonious of the five forms of Hindu salutation, consists of prostrating and of making the eight parts of the body—namely, the temples, nose and chin, knees and hands—touch the ground.]

195. [ “Sidhis,” the personified Powers of Nature. At least, so we explain them: but people do not worship abstract powers.]

196. [ The residence of Indra, king of heaven, built by Wishwa-Karma, the architect of the gods.]

197. [ In other words, to the present day, whenever a Hindu novelist, romancer, or tale writer seeks a peg upon which to suspend the texture of his story, he invariably pitches upon the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of that Eastern King Arthur, Vikramaditya, shortly called Vikram.]