this delicate work was entrusted to Vishnu the guardian deity, who, like the learned Premier of mighty England, was always considered an adept in the art of diplomacy,. Vishnu now assumed the guise of a Buddhist preacher and follower of the doctrines of Charvak.1 Disguised as above, Vishnu went among the wives of the demons and preached to them that the idea of the supremacy of God was false, and that as no one could say whether his father after death has gone to heaven or earth; the belief that

As

men after death went to heaven or hell was also not true. there was neither God nor heaven, the best course for all, was to indulge in all sorts of pleasure and thus enjoy the sweets of life. By preaching such doctrines he induced the wives of the demons to indulge in all sorts of pleasure and immorality. Having accomplished this, Vishnu went to Shiva and became his arrow. With this arrow Shiva now aimed at the cities of the Tripuras, and simultaneously destroyed the cities as well as the Tripuras. The gods were overjoyed. They sang the praises of Shiva, worshipped him with lotuses and made illuminations in heaven. And in commemoration of this event the festival of the Tripuri Purnima is celebrated in India on the fullmoon-day of the Hindu month of Kartik (November).

THE LEGEND OF THE AMAZONS.

By G. E. L. CARTER, ESQ., I.C.S.

"We must free our minds of a great deal of prejudice before we can rightly judge of the direction in which different nations need to be improved. We must be on our guard against taking our own instincts of what is best and most seemly as a criterion for the rest of mankind. The instincts and faculties of different men differ in a variety of ways almost as profoundly as those of animals.”

F. GALTON.

1 Charvak was the founder of the Hindu school of philosophy resem. bling Nihilism and Atheism of modern Europe. He denied the existence of God and preached all men and women to eat, drink and be merry.

I.

Some Sumra customs.

The Sumras of Sind used to brand people and call them their slaves. They would wear turbans (of woven cloth) and ordered their subjects to wear turbans of unwoven thread. If once a woman had given birth to a child they never lay with her again. They never washed clothes and wore them again.

One wise woman arose among them. When she became pregnant she knew that after her delivery she would be separated from her husband. She therefore obtained some old clothes of her husband, washed them, put some scent on them and laid them on one side. One day, when, after bathing, her husband asked for some clothes, she gave him these to wear. The husband wore them and was much pleased with them. He inquired of his wife whence she had obtained them. The wife replied that they were the very clothes he had thrown away, regarding them as useless and thinking that God disapproved of his wearing such clean clothes. The husband was pleased and advised all men to copy his example.

The woman saw that her first plan had been successful. She then told her husband that the same argument applied to a woman who was neglected by her husband after delivery. With experience the husband agreed with this also and advised his caste-fellows to copy him in this too. Gradually this bad custom died out among the Sumras.1

A Marriage custom I.

Col. Yule quotes a similar custom in a note regarding the Isles of the Males and Females. "The story was, I imagine, a mere ramification of the ancient and widespread fable of the Amazons and is substantially the same that Palladius tells of the Brahmans; how the men lived on one side of the Ganges and the women

1 Traditional, from the Tuhfat-ul-kiram.

on the other. The husbands visited their wives for forty days only, in June, July and August, "these being their cold-weather months as the Sun was then to the north." And when the wife had once borne a child the husband returned no more. !

Travellers Tales.

Glancing first casually at the quaint item of interest: "Just, O King, as the female of the panther conceives only once and does not resort again and again to the male, "" 2 we will discuss at some length the tale of Palladius. In the Questions of King Milinda (IV. 7-24) the paradox is discussed. "Why is it that the heat of the Sun is more fierce in winter than in Summer?" The problem is treated correctly-on physiological lines; in winter the skies are so clear that the sun temperature relative to the shade temperature is really fierce, whereas in summer what with the clouds of dust and rain and what not, it is barely hotter outside a house than inside. Perhaps by some such reasoning Palladius commits what is at first sight the blunder of talking of the cold weather of July. In Marathi the cold raw weather of a damp cloudy day in the rains is known as gár, which pronounced guttu rally is indeed expressive.

The social aspect of the tale is, too, not without a strong ele. ment of truth, judged even by existing practice. In the mountainous parts of Western India around Bombay and probably wherever the rain is equally heavy, say over sixty inches in the monsoon season, it is the custom for the poorer tribes (e.g., Kolis, Varlis, Katkaris) to hibernate, men and women in pairs. The result is a splendid crop of babies in the succeeding months of April and May. As among Kunbis, the peasant proprietors of the same area, the baby crop comes in February and March, indicating that co-cohabitation is general in the hot weather before the rains set in, when agricultural work is at a standstill.

1 From Marco Polo. ed. Col. Yule. II. 339.

2 Questions of King Milinda. VII. 1.9. Cf. also Herodotus III. 108.

The hot weather is the marriage season among the Kunbis of the Deccan. Perhaps we have here the distinction between Koli and Kunbi, the latter being a family man and the former one who took a new wife every year, mating for the season.

An examination of the registers of the births of the "junglepatti" villages of the Thana district certainly illustrates this feature of hibernation and births are very rare and usually confined to independent and well-to-do families outside the months specified above. As there are several rivers called Ganga in the Thana district, one wonders whether a Konkan ghat custom has been transferred by mistake to the country beyond the great Ganges. If not, then this custom must have been fairly general throughout India and throws light on the humours of the Buddhist injunction that priests must not wander about the country. during the rains but confine themselves to their monasteries.

What became a

A Marriage Custom II.

delocalised fable may have originated in a strange marriage custom. For instance, in the Mahabharata one reads that the God Agni, in thanks for his adultery being condoned, instituted in the town of Mahishmati a custom which rendered the girls of the city unacceptable to others as wives. "By his boon he granted sexual liberty, so that the women of that town always roam about at will, each unconfined to a particular husband. And from that time the monarchs of other countries refrained from attacking that city for fear of Agni." 1

A Marriage Custom III.

And again at the time of the rejuvenation of the Kshatriyas the Kshatriya ladies came to the Brahmans. And the Brahmans of rigid vows had connections with them during the womanly season alone. And thus the four Orders, having Brahmans at their head were re-established. And every man at that

1 Mahabharata Sabha Parva c. 31. Trans. P. C. Roy.

time went unto his wife during the season and never from lust and out of season.1

The Amazons I.

The account given by Hiuen Tsiang of the Country of the Western Women is akin in some respects to the legends relating to the fairy origin of the Baloch. "The boat in which the girl was embarked was driven over the sea till it reached Persia, the abode of the western demons, who, by intercourse with her, engendered a clan of women-children.....To the southwest of Folin in an island of the sea is the kingdom of the western women; here there are only women with no men; they possess a large quantity of gems and precious stones of which they exchange in Folin. Therefore the king of Folin sends certain men to live with them for a time. If they should have male children they are not allowed to bring them up.2

The Amazons II.

In the Rajatarangini the kingdom appears to have lain to the west of the deserts of Rajputana or the Punjab, "His elephants then passed through a sea of sand. Here was the kingdom of the Females and it was governed by a female; and the soldiers became impatient for the women. The queen submitted and came out to have an interview with the invader, and trembled before him, it is not certain whether with fear or in love." The invader was the great Lalitaditya of Kashmir 733-769 A.D. "In the kingdom of the females he set up an mage of Nrisingha, unsupported by anything but placed in the air between the lodestones, one above and one below.3

1 Op. cit. Adi Parva c. 64.

2 Buddhist Records of the Western World. Trans. Beal. II. pp. 240, 277, 279.

3 Rajatarangini. Trans. Dutt. Bk. IV.