longest absorbs our attention-India, fecund mother of tradition, the sourc
prises, and over whose head is written the sacred word Aum, never uttered by a Hindoo except with awe and veneration. If a man begins to build a house, he calls on Ganesa, and sets up an image of him near the spot. Mile-stones are fashioned in his likeness, and he serves as the road-side god, even if the pious peasants who place him where two roads cross can only afford the rudest resemblance to an elephant's head daubed with oil and red ochre. Rude as it may be, a passing traveler will occasionally hang upon it a wreath of flowers. Major Moor gives us a hid
e jolly Bacchus, the Don Juan, of the Indian deities. Behold him on his travels mounted u
od Krishna o
with him everywhere, a countless multitude, are so accommodating as to wreathe and twist themselves into t
ants assuming th
ivating Krishnas as there were ladies. One summer, when he was passing the hot season on the sea-shore with his retinue of ladies, his musical comrade, Nareda, hinted to him that, since he had such a multitude of wives, it would be no great stretch of generosity to spare one to a poor musician who had no wife at all. "Court any one you please," said the merry god. So Nareda went wooing from house to house, but in every house he found Krishna perfectly domesticated, the ever-attentive husband, and the lady quite sure that she had him all to herself. Nareda continued his quest until he
in his P
especially in all the monstrous comicalities of their mythology. No matter how serious an impression a speaker may have made upon a village group, let hi
dred English officers are gathered, there is the possibility of an illustrated comic periodical, and, accordingly, we find one such in several of the garrisoned places he