Note 25 — Chapter I

Adris and parvatas properly mean mountain, but, in the Vedâs, often cloud; and among their many meanings there is also that of tree; agas (properly that which does not move) expresses equally tree and mountain. Hence perhaps the Italian proverb: Le montagne stanno ferme, ma gli uomini s'incontrano, Mountains stand still, but men meet; hence the cry of Râmas in the Râmâyaṇam, ii. 122, that the Himâlayas would move before he should become a traitor; hence the assurance with which Macbeth, after the celebrated prophecy of the witches, can say: "That will never be; who can impress the forest; bid the tree unfix his earth-bound root?" Shakespeare (Macbeth, iv. 1.) Nevertheless the forest moved, as it not unfrequently does in the myths, where the tree-clouds walk, and fill all with terror wherever they go, where heroes and monsters often fight, by unrooting the trees of a whole forest. Cfr. Râmâyaṇam, iii. 3, 5, and the chapters of this work which treat of the Horse, the Bear, and the Monkey.