was a three-headed monster slain by Indra.

611 The Vanar chief, not to be confounded with Tara.

612 Sravan: July-August. But the rains begin a month earlier, and what
follows must not be taken literally. The text has _purvo' yam
varshiko masah Sravanah salilagamdh_. The Bengal recension has the
same, and Gorresio translates: "Equesto ilmese Sravana
(luglio-agosto) primo della stagione piovosa, in cui dilagano le
acque."

613 Kartik: October-November.

614 "Indras, as the nocturnal sun, hides himself, transformed, in the
starry heavens: the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or
all-seeing (panoptes) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the
cow beloved by Zeus, in the Hellenic equivalent of this form of
Indras." DE GUBERNATIS, _Zoological Mythology_, Vol. I, p. 418.

615 Baudhayana and others.

616 Sugriva appears to have been consecrated with all the ceremonies
that attended the _Abhisheka_ or coronation of an Indian prince of
the Aryan race. Compare the preparations made for Rama's
consecration, Book II, Canto III. Thus Homer frequently introduces
into Troy the rites of Hellenic worship.

617 Vitex Negundo.

618 Malyavat: "The name of this mountain appears to me to be erroneous,
and I think that instead of Malyavat should be read Malayavat,
Malaya is a group of mountains situated exactly in that southern
part of India where Rama now was, while Malyavat is placed to the
north east." GORRESIO.

619 Mantles of the skin of the black antelope were the prescribed dress
of ascetics and religious students.

620 The sacred cord worn as the badge of religious initiation by men of
the three twice-born castes.

621 The hum with which students conduct their tasks.

622 I omit here a long general description of the rainy season which is
not found in the Bengal recension and appears to have been
interpolated by a far inferior and much later hand than Valmiki's.
It is composed in a metre different from that of the rest of the
Canto, and contains figures of poetical rhetoric and common-places
which are the delight of more recent poets.

623 Praushthapada or Bhadra, the modern Bhadon, corresponds to half of
August and half of September.

624 The Saman or Sama-veda, the third of the four Vedas, is really
merely a reproduction of