Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt:... brown mungooses with their bushy tails, enemies of the serpent race; jambuks, shrigals, jackals, vranjari, paria, and other varieties of dogs; flying squirrels, and black monkeys with white faces, from the sandal-wood mountains of Malabar; grey bonkas and black chapas from one only spot in the Isle of Palms; and striped squirrels, called Chanis, that love to sport on the banyan-tree. With these flocked many varieties of birds--screaming cranes and herons; tall, stalking, stupid adjutants; white paddy birds, contemplating the growing rice crops as if they were intent on making a Jamabandi, or revenue settlement; high-crested cockatoos, screaming like angry old women; peacocks trumpeting and waving their trains of green and gold to the rumble of the thunder-clouds; speckled guinea fowls, with white and scarlet tippets, ever pursuing each other, singly or in groups; turtle doves, with their low ringing co60, bringing reminiscences of solitude and far-away valleys; screeching parrots, with blue or crimson rings round their green or greyish necks; and lories, with every colour of the rainbow--of all the feathered race the most splendid in the hues of their plumage, and of all the most affectionate; fitly selected, therefore, to carry Kandarpa, the deity of love. When Maricha beheld this splendid collection of animals and birds, he imagined the Kamatur Rakshas designed to make a last trial of his virtue, by offering it to him as a propitiatory gift, and steeled himself, accordingly, for further resistance. No sooner, however, had all the animals entered the enclosure, than the Rakshas closed the gate; and taking his bow in his hands, and emptying out upon the ground before him all the arrows in his two quivers (for the warriors of ancient...