eorge King says _vasha_ is
not rice at all. This is what he wrote to me on the subject: "_Vasha_
is, I suppose, the same as _vasaka_, and in that case is _Justitia
Adhatoda_, a straggling shrub common over the whole of India [very
unlike the Rat-vasha-ke-dhan] and which was in the Sanscrit as it is
in the native pharmacopoeias. It is not a kind of rice, but belongs
to the natural order of Acanthaceae (the family to which Acanthus and
Thunbergia belong)." This night-growing rice may be compared to the
day-growing rice in paragraph 2, p. 288, of the notes to this story.

7. Compare with the paper boat the rolled-up burdock leaf given to the
hero by the dwarf in the seventh Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis
(_Zoological Mythology_, vol. I. p. 155): whenever this hero wishes to
cross water he unrolls his burdock-leaf. Gubernatis compares this leaf
to the lotus-leaf on which the Hindus represented their god as
floating in the midst of the waters (_ibid._).

8. With the great wind that comes from the demon, compare the
following Swedish account of a giant in Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_,
vol. II. p. 85. He asks his road of a lad, who directs him: then "he
went off as in a whirlwind, and the lad now discovered, to his no
small astonishment, that his forefinger with which he had pointed out
the way had followed along with the giant." In the old Scandinavian
belief the Giant Hraesvelgr sat at the end of heaven in an eagle's garb
(arna ham). From the motion of his wings came the wind which passed
over men (_ib._ vol. I. p. 8). It must be mentioned also that "in the
German popular tales the devil is frequently made to step into the
place of the giants" (_ib._ vol. I. p. 234), and that Stoepke or Stepke
is in Lower Saxony an appellation of the devil or of the whirlwind,
from which proceed the fogs which spread over the land (_ib._ p. 235).
The devil sits in the whirlwind and rushes howling and raging through
the air (Mark Sagen, _ib._ p. 377). The whirlwind is also ascribed to
witches. If a knife be cast into it, the witch will be wounded and
become visible (Schreiber's Taschenbuch, 1839, p. 323; _ib._ vol. I.
p. 235). Mr. Ralston, in his _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 382,
says the Russian peasant attributes whirlwinds to the mad dances in
which the devil celebrates his marriage with a witch, and at p. 155 of
the same book tells us how the malicious demon Lyeshy not only makes
use of the whirlwind as a travelling conveyance