Note 153 — Appendix. VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES OF THE TALES IN THE SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS, VOL. III.

In the “Kathá Sarit Ságara,” Book ii., ch. 14, when the King of Vatsa receives the hand of Vasavadatta, “like a beautiful shoot lately budded on the creeper of love,” she walks round the fire, keeping it to the right, on which Prof. Tawney remarks that “the practice of walking round an object of reverence, with the right hand towards it, has been exhaustively discussed by Dr. Samuel Fergusson in his paper, ‘On the ceremonial turn called Desiul,’ published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, for March 1877 (vol i., series ii., No. 12). He shows it to have existed among the ancient Romans as well as the Celts.... Dr. Fergusson is of opinion that this movement was a symbol of the cosmical rotation, an imitation of the apparent course of the sun in the heavens.”