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DECEMBER, 1877.]
ON THE KĶISHŅAJANMASHȚAME.
349
tame, swims about in the friskiest way, and is quite like a fawning dog. It does not run away when any one tries to stroke it, and it takes with pleasure any food it is offered.
(19.) The sea-hare, by which I now mean the kind found in the great sea (for of the kind found in the other sea I have already spoken), re. sembles in every particular the land hare except only the fur, which in the case of the land animal is soft and lies smoothly down, and does not resist the touch, whereas its brother of the sea has bristling hair which is prickly, and inflicts a wound on any one who touches it. It is said to swim atop of the sea-ripple without ever diving below, and to be very rapid in its movements. To catch it alive is no easy matter, as it. never falls into the net, nor goes near the line and bait of the fishing-rod. When it suffers, however, from disease, and, being in consequence hardly able to swim, is cast out on shore, then if any one touches it with his hand death ensues if he is not attended to,-nay, should one, were it only
with a staff, touch this dead hare, he is affected in the same way as those who have touched a basilisk. But a root, it is said, grows along the coast of the island, well known to every one, which is a remedy for the swooning which ensues. It is brought close to the nostrils of the person who has fainted, who thereupon recovers conscious. ness. But should the remedy not be applied the injury proves fatal to life, such power for evil does this hare possess.
Frag. XV. B. follows here. (22.) There is also a race called the Skira. tai, whose country is beyond India. They are snub-nosed, either because in the tender years of infancy their nostrils are pressed down, and continue to be go throughout their after-life, or because such is the natural shape of the organ. Serpents of enormous size are bred in their country, of which some kinds seize the cattle when at pasture and devour them, while other kinds only suck the blood, as do the digithelai in Greece, of which I have already spoken in the proper place.
ON THE KRISHŅAJANMASHTAMI, OR KRISHNA'S BIRTH-FESTIVAL.
BY PROF. A. WEBER, BERLIN.
Translated by Misa M. Tweedie. (Concluded from p. 801, and vol. III. p. 52.)
especially on the Continent. Still, it should not, * We have still to glance also at the actual re- without further evidence, be concluded, from the presentations which the birth of Krishna, temporary want of other pictures and figures of the especially the god drinking at his mother's breast, kind, that these do not exist. Rather may the has found in Indian art, or, to speak more existence of more such representations be inferred accurately, at those specimens of these last which with certainty from the fact that the ritual of the lie before us. Unfortunately, only a few pictures Krishnajanmashtami itself puts them down as an of the kind are known to me, and these obviously integral element in the festival. In any case, of quite modern origin, belonging, in all pro- however, the specimens before us suffice to dibability, to the century previous to that in which vide them into two groups-namely, those which they come down to us-either precisely to that or indicate a certain, even high, rank of artistic cultito the times immediately preceding. No repre- vation, and those which rather seem, so to speak. sentations of the kind in any religious building, in to be the products of uncultivated handicraft. temple-paintings or sculptures, are known to me. The latter group is soon disposed of: it conGreat ignorance of the documents of Indian art sists of two pictures only. The first belonging to must, unfortunately, be expected here in Europe, this group is the figure represented in front and
This is the fragment in which Ælian describes the one-horned animal which he calls the Kartazôn. Rorenmüller, who has treated at large of the unicore, which he identifies with the Indian rhinoceros, thinks that Alian probably borrowed his account of it from Ktérias, who when in Persis may have heard exaggerated accounts of it, or may have seen it represented in sculpture with variations from its actual appearance. Tychsen derives its name from Kerd, an old name, he says, of the rhinoderos itself, and tasan, i.e., currens veloe, irruens. Three animals were spoken of by the ancienta as having & single horn-the
African Oryx, the Indian Ass, and what is specially called the Unicorn.
I Vide ante, Fragm. xxx. 3, p. 135, and p. 133 note t, where they are identified with the Kirktas. In the Ramdyana there is a p.888.ge quoted by Lassen (Zeitschrif. Kunde d. Morgenl. II. 40) where are mentioned "the Kirktas, some of whom dwell in Mount Mandara, others use their ears as a govering; they are horrible, black-faced, with but one foot but very fleet, who cannot be exterminated, are brave men, and cannibals." (Schwanbeok, p. 66.) [Lassen places one branch of them on the south bank of the Kausi in Nipal, and another in Tiperi.-ED.]
