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DECEMBER, 1881.]
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES.
363
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES. BY M. J. WALHOUSE, LATE M.C.S.
(Continued from Vol. IX, p. 299.) No. XXVII.-Scraps of Legend and Folk-lore. I.
| and the calf getting bewildered was run over by The Kâyêri river from its magnificent twin- the chariot of the king's son and cutin two. The falls on either side of the romantic but perilous king's son was greatly alarmed at this ominous island of Sivasamudram-falls in height, volume, incident, and still more so, when the cow came and grandeur far surpassing the famous Rhine- seeking its calf, and on finding the two halves, fall at Schaffhausen--rans for 50 miles eastward put them together and sought to give milk, through a savage wilderness of ravines and hills, but finding it would take none, shed tears pro& parched and dreary tract overrun by thin, fusely. The cow then went to the bell banging thorny jangal, uninhabited and almost pathless. before the court of justice, and rang it loudly, In this part of its course the river divides the at which the old king, his wife and minista district of Köimbatúr on the south from Mai- hearing what had taken place, almost swooned sûr and Salem on the north ; and just where with fear and grief. A council was held, and it issuing from its eastward march through the was decided that the king's son should, in expiadesert, it bends abruptly southward, and thence tion, fall before the chariot-wheels, and himself forward rolls broader waters through peopled be cut in two. So amid the great grief of the and cultivated plains on its way to Trichinkpalli people, the king set out to see the atonement and Tanjaur, there is a curious seldom-visited performed. The young man remonstrated on locality called the Smoking Rock. Issuing from the ground of the advantage that neigh. its long, narrowed, and pent-up course through boaring rival kings would gain if the heir were the desert, the Kiveri here spreads into a broad 80 sacrificed, but as the Brahmaņs declared that expanse, the banks nearly level with the water, without it there would be no rain and no crops, and from the middle of the flood a column, the king ordered the chariot to move on, which apparently of white smoke, arises and drifts ran over the young man as he lay prostrate and away upon the wind. No rocks or fall are visible
cut him into two pieces, which were presented to account for this continually ascending cloud before the cow, and the crime of killing the calf of Apray-mist, for such it is; but the natives say thus expiated. The king in great sorrow at his there is a hole or chasm, four palm-trees deep, loss was about to kill himself, when the illuinto which the water falls; nothing however can sive cow dissolved into its component divinibe seen of this from the bank, and the smoke- ties, who appeared in their proper guise, raised like column seems to arise from the bosom of the son to life again, and decreed that he an unbroken stream. The effect is striking and should be installed with his father under the peculiar. There is a strange wild legend con- title of Bhupala Chola, and that the old king nected with this spot.
should afterwards receive final beatitude withLong ago, it is said, in the days of the Chola out the pain of any future birth. Bhopala kings all the countless gods of Kailasa, great Chola was sixteen when he came to reign, and and small, with the thousands of Rishis, Saktis, ruled prosperously for many years, when, in a and Asuras, came down to be incarnate on earth hanting excursion, he discovered a great chasm in the form of a miraculous cow. The four which swallowed up and wasted the water of Vedas became the four legs, Brahma and Vishnu the Kivêri river. He employed a great multi. the two horns, the sun and moon the eyes, the tude of men to fill it up, but all their efforts holy mountain the body, Vayu the tail, Lakshmi were udavailing, though the king resided for the womb, the divine atmosphere (akása) the eight years close by, the better to superintend ears, and so on through all parts of the body, the work. At last a Rishi told him that his and Yama (death) was its calf. Thus sym- labour was in vain, for the chakra of Vishnu bolically formed, the cow with its calf went to had entered the earth there, and that the only bathe near the temple of Siva, and met in & remedy was for some virtuous king to enter street the king's son making a procession; in the chasm and seat himself on the chakra, the crowd the cow and calf became separated, I when the gulph would close. So after many
