e story is clear enough. It is a contest for supremacy between
the regal or military order and Brahmanical or priestly authority,
like one of those struggles which our own Europe saw in the middle
ages when without employing warlike weapons the priesthood
frequently gained the victory." SCHLEGEL.

For a full account of the early contests between the Brahmans and
the Kshattriyas, see Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts (Second edition)
Vol. I. Ch. IV.

234 "Trisanku, king of Ayodhya, was seventh in descent from Ikshvaku,
and Dasaratha holds the thirty-fourth place in the same genealogy.
See Canto LXX. We are thrown back, therefore, to very ancient times,
and it occasions some surprise to find Vasishtha and Visvamitra,
actors in these occurences, still alive in Rama's time."

235 "It does not appear how Trisanku, in asking the aid of Vasishtha's
sons after applying in vain to their father, could be charged with
resorting to another _sakha_ (School) in the ordinary sense of that
word; as it is not conceivable that the sons should have been of
another Sakha from the father, whose cause they espouse with so much
warmth. The commentator in the Bombay edition explains the word
_Sakhantaram_ as Yajanadina rakshantaram, 'one who by sacrificing
for thee, etc., will be another protector.' Gorresio's Gauda text,
which may often be used as a commentary on the older one, has the
following paraphrase of the words in question, ch. 60, 3. Mulam
utsrijya kasmat tvam sakhasv ichhasi lambitum. 'Why, forsaking the
root, dost thou desire to hang upon the branches?' " MUIR, Sanskrit
Texts, Vol. I., p. 401.

236 A Chandala was a man born of the illegal and impure union of a Sudra
with a woman of one of the three higher castes.

237 "The Chandala was regarded as the vilest and most abject of the men
sprung from wedlock forbidden by the law (Manavadharmasastra, Lib.
X. 12.); a kind of social malediction weighed upon his head and
rejected him from human society." GORRESIO.

238 This appellation, occuring nowhere else in the poem except as the
name of a city, appears twice in this Canto as a name of Vasishtha.

239 "The seven ancient rishis or saints, as has been said before, were
the seven stars of Ursa Major. The seven other new saints which are
here said