da; while the dismayed sirdar found the
head of a fourth jammed inextricably in the neck of his sacred lotah,
wherewith he performs his pious ablutions every morning at the ghaut.

On the other hand, Lootee has made prize of about three inches of
Tehoop's tail, and displays it all over the house for a trophy.--It is a
blood-feud, fierce and implacable as any between Afghans, and there's no
knowing where it will all end.

In Europe the monkey is a cynic, in South America an overworked slave,
in Africa a citizen, but in India an imp,--I mean to the eye of
the Western stranger, for in the estimation of the native he is
mythologically a demigod, and socially a guest. At Ahmedabad, the
capital of Guzerat, there are certainly two--Mr. De Ward says
three--hospitals for sick and lame monkeys, who are therein provided
with salaried physicians, apothecaries, and nurses.

In the famous Hindoo epic, the "Ramayana" of Valmiki,--"by singing and
hearing which continually a man may attain to the highest state of
enjoyment, and be shortly admitted to fraternity with the gods,"--the
exploits of Hoonamunta, the Divine Monkey, are gravely related, with
a dramatic force and figurativeness that hold a street audience
spell-bound; but to the European imagination the childish drollery of
the plot is irrestistible.

Boodhir, the Earth, was beset by giants, demons, and chimeras dire; so
she besought Vishnu, with many tears, and vows of peculiar adoration,
to put forth his strength of arms and arts against her abominable
tormentors, and rout them utterly. The god was gracious; whence his nine
avatars, or incarnations,--as fish, as tortoise, as boar, as man-lion,
as dwarf Brahmin, as Pursuram,--the Brahmin-warrior who overthrew the
Kshatriya, or soldier-caste; the eighth avatar appeared in the person of
Krishna, and the ninth in that of Boodh.

But the seventh incarnation was the avatar of Rama, and it is this that
the "Ramayana" celebrates.

Vishnu proceeds to be born unto Doosurath, King of Ayodhya, (Oude,) as
the Prince Rama, or Ramchundra. Nothing remarkable occurs thereupon
until Rama has attained the marriageable age, when he espouses Seeta,
daughter of the King of Mithili.

Immediately old Mrs. Mithili, our hero's mother-in-law, being of an
intriguing turn of mind, applies herself to the amiable task of worrying
the poor old King of Ayodhya out of his crown or his life; and so well
does she succeed, that Doosurath, for the sake of p