Note 102 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

According to the Sikandarnâma, Khwâja Khizr was a saint of Islâm, who presided over the well of immortality, and directed Alexander of Macedon in his vain search for the blessed waters. The fish is his vehicle, and hence its image is painted over the doors of both Hindus and Muhammadans, while it became the family crest of the late royal house of Oudh. Among Muhammadans a prayer is said to Khwâja Khizr at the first shaving of a boy, and a little boat is launched in a river or tank in his honour. The same rite is performed at the close of the rainy season, when it is supposed to have some connection with the saint Ilisha, that is to say the prophet Elisha. Elisha, by the way, apparently from the miraculous way in which his bones revived the dead, has come down in modern times to Italy as a worker of miracles, and is known to the Tuscan peasant as Elisaeus.102