Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
In Gayasira is a banian, which is called by the Brahmanas the Eternal banian, for the food that is offered there to the Pitris becometh eternal, O exalted one! The great river that floweth by the place is known by the name of Phalgu, and its waters are all sacred.
The banian is like a huge tent; each branch sends shoots to the ground, which take root and become additional trunks, and year after year the tree increases its acreage; hundreds of men can find shelter under these jungle temples. "Piang!" The voice came from within the tree. Astonished, Piang watched the mina-bird flit through the sunlight and disappear into the banya.
That the board continued to sit and examine witnesses, servants of the Phousdar, on oath and written evidence, being letters under the hand and seal of the Phousdar, all directly tending to prove the charge: viz., that, out of the salary of seventy-two thousand rupees a year paid by the Company, the said Phousdar received but thirty-two thousand, and that the remainder was received by the said Warren Hastings and his banian.
Ugh! smiled reminiscently as if his thoughts were returning from pleasant things, and clapped his hands as a signal for reembarking. The bowls of food remaining were tied in baskets of leaves and hung in the banian tree to await the boatsmen's return for the night, the steersman was carried to his place, and the boat pushed through the surf.
It was a very wonderful garden, a jungle of exotic plants and shrubs threaded by narrow walks that led to secluded nooks and unsuspected pleasaunces, and lighted by low-swung festoons of dim lamps, many-coloured. A banian grew curiously in its midst, and there also they found a great tank of crystal water with a bed of brilliant pebbles over which small golden gleaming fish flashed and loitered.
All my actions having been carefully thought out and decided upon beforehand, I approached with a bold swagger the shop of a reputable-looking banian, and, in the usual manner of business, took my seat cross-legged before him. Two other merchants were seated near by, but to them I gave no heed.
"But why so particularly this evening? I'm afraid it's a Banian day, and Molly will not have anything nice for you." "Never mind that, ma'am. I want to take you all down to see the wreck at high-water," said he. "It will probably be the last of the old ship." "Hurrah!" exclaimed Bob, pitching his hat in the air, and catching it dexterously again. "Won't that be jolly?"
All these female relatives cawing day and night like a set of crows in a banian tree; at every moment screams, laughter, quarrelling, bad reasoning, gossip, reproach, the scuffling of boys, the crying of girls. "Bring water!" "Give the clothes!" "Cook the rice!" "The child does not eat!" "Where is the milk?" etc., is heard as an ocean of confused sounds.
Above the broken rim of the three-fold walls the moon's unearthly splendor made visible a vast confusion of crumbling cornices, blank walls, turrets, domes, and towers, the gnarled limbs of dead trees, the luxuriant dark foliage of banian and pepal, palm and acacia. But nothing moved and there was not a light to be seen. These things with the silence told the tale of death.
They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks, that always at midnight, when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo's banian topes with her lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child, girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz, shakes the Baboo's gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so piteously, "Ayah! Ayah!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking