Note 18 — BOOK I.

p. 4. l. 15. There the swans he saw disporting. In the original this is a far less poetic bird, and the author must crave forgiveness for having turned his geese into swans. If, however, we are to believe Bohlen, in his learned work, Das Alte Indien, the translators are altogether mistaken; they have been misled by the similarity of the word Hansa to Gans—a goose. The original, he asserts, to mean a mythic bird, closely resembling the swan, or perhaps the tall and brilliant flamingo, which Southey has introduced with such effect in one of his rich descriptions in the Curse of Kehama. The goose, however, according to the general opinion, is so common in Indian mythology, that this must be received with much caution. In the modern Tamulic version of the story, translated by Mr. Kindersley, are substituted, "Milk white Aunnays, descending from the skies, like an undulating garland of pearls." The Aunnays are supposed to be a sort of birds of paradise. They are represented as milk white; remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk; and endowed with considerable gifts. Mr. Wilson, in his Meghaduta, has given me a precedent for the change of geese into swans; see p. 27, v. 71, with the note. And Mr. Ellis, Asiatic Researches, vol. xiv. p. 29, has the following note on the subject: "There are three distinctions of Hamsa; the Raja-hamsa, with a milk-white body and deep red beak and legs, this is the Phenicopteros, or flamingo; the Mallicácsha-hamsa, with brownish beak and legs; and the Dhartarashtra-hamsa, with black beak and legs: the latter is the European swan, the former a variety. The gait of an elegant woman is compared by the Hindu poets to the proud bearing of a swan in the water. Sonnerat, making a mistake similar to that in the text, translates a passage in which this allusion occurs, in words to the following purport, 'Her gait resembled that of a goose.' Other writers have fallen into the same error." The swans, ou Plutôt les Génies ailès, play the same part in an extract from the Harivansa, translated by M. Langlois, in his Monumens Littéraires de l'Inde, Paris, 1827, p. 158. The first part of the Harivansa has just appeared, under the auspices of the Oriental Translation Committee.