ded a certain number of women, presided over by an
elderly and venerable matron, whose authority resembled that of
an abbess in a convent of nuns.

30. _Ku[s']a-grass_.

This grass was held sacred by the Hindus, and was abundantly
used in all their religions ceremonies. Its leaves are very long,
and taper to a sharp needle-like point, of which the extreme
acuteness was proverbial; whence the epithet applied to a clever
man, 'sharp as the point of Ku[s']a-grass.' Its botanical name is
_Poa cynosuroides_.

31. _Kuruvaka._

A species of Jhinti or Barleria, with purple flowers, and covered
with sharp prickles.

32. _The Jester_.

See an account of this character in the Introduction, p. xxxiv.

33. _We have nothing to eat but roast game_.

Indian game is often very dry and flavourless.

34. _Attended by the Yavana women_.

Who these women were has not been accurately ascertained. Yavana
is properly Arabia, but is also a name applied to Greece. The
Yavana women were therefore either natives of Arabia, or Greece,
and their business was to attend upon the king, and take charge
of his weapons, especially his bow and arrows. Professor H. H.
Wilson, in his translation of the Vikramorva[s']i, where the same
word occurs (Act V. p. 261), remarks that Tartarian or Bactrian
women may be intended.

35. _In the disc of crystal_.

That is, the sun-gem (_Surya-kanta_, 'beloved by the sun'), a
shining stone resembling crystal. Professor Wilson calls it a
fabulous stone with fabulous properties, and mentions another
stone, the moon-gem (_chandra-kanta_). It may be gathered from
this passage that the sun-stone was a kind of glass lens, and
that the Hindus were not ignorant of the properties of this
instrument at the time when '[S']akoontala' was written.

36. _Some fallen blossoms of the jasmine_.

The jasmine here intended was a kind of double jasmine with a
very delicious perfume, sometimes called 'Arabian jasmine'
(_Jasminum zambac_). It was a delicate plant, and, as a creeper,
would depend on some other tree for support. The Arka, or
sun-tree (Gigantic Asclepias: _Calotropis gigantea_), on the
other hand, was a large and vigorous shrub. Hence the former is
compared to [S']akoontala, the latter to the sage Kanwa.

37.

_The mellowed fruit
Of virtuous actions in some former birth_.

The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to
another is an essential dogma of the Hindu religio