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The bird called Cātaka (Coccystes melanoleucos) is well known to naturalists iri India, as well as to students of native folklore and poetry; and I cannot introduce my remarks on its twofold character more appropriately than by quoting the following extract from a letter from Mrs. Mullens, the eminent Zenana missionary in Bengal.
Page 599 note 1 See her Memoir.
Page 600 note 1 Cf. the American “whip-poor-will” and “Katy-did.”
Page 601 note 1 Sc. the hot months would dry up the cloud. “During the hot weather the prevailing breeze in Hindustan is from the south.”—Wilson, Hindu Drama, i. 211.
Page 601 note 2 An allusion to Agastya, who drank up the ocean, in order that the gods might slay the demons who had hidden in it. See Mahābh. iii. § 105.
Page 602 note 1 This alludes to the ants becoming winged just as the rainy season begins. Cf. the Urdu proverb, “when the ants are about to die, their wings come forth.” (There is a similar proverb in Don Quixote, part ii. ch. 53, “por su mal nacieron alas á la hormiga.”)
Page 603 note 1 I take saumya as a vocative; it is so used of the cloud in Meghad. 113.
Page 603 note 2 Nīragraham seems to me a rare form of ṇamul, cf. the old form Keçagrāham. Amantravarjam occurs in Kumāra-s. vii. 72.
Page 603 note 3 Böhtlingk takes antaragalam as “die entfernte.”
Page 604 note 1 This is the explanation given under kshap in the St. Petersb. Lexicon. Böhtlingk in Ind. Sprüche gives another reading, jalado for jalade, “though he curses the cloud, still the cloud is not angry with him.”
Page 604 note 2 Another reading is khago māni “the one truly proud bird.”