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A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his gentle little wife.
Wherefore this golden egg floated about for the period of a year. From it in a year a male came into existence, who was Prajapati.... He divided this golden egg.... In a year he desired to speak. He uttered 'bhur, which became this earth; 'bhuvah, which became this firmament; and 'svar, which became that sky.... Desiring progeny, he went on worshiping and toiling.
Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet.
It has been built by some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen. At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is generally shadowed by a huge bhur, peepul, or tamarind tree. Here may always be seen the busiest sight in the village.
So rapidly did his dealings increase that he sought an agent to represent him at the district headquarters; and particularly to buy up defaulters' estates at the auctions which are held periodically under Government auspices. His choice fell upon one Bipinbehári Bhur, who had a widespread reputation for acuteness. It was not belied.
At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred to Chumpa buttee, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer, buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen.
The hill seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur, with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland loveliness.
The waters are thought of as desiring, that is, they are held to be alive and vaguely conscious. The belief that words are inseparable from things should again be noted. "Bhur" becomes the earth, and "svar" becomes the sky. In the course of time, Hindoo thought became more abstract and sophisticated without having achieved any method which would lead to tested knowledge.
Rider after rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put five horses hors de combat. It now took up a position under a big 'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
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