Taprobane

“ In later times Taprobane was exchanged for Simundu, Palai-simundu, and Salike, under which names it is described by PTOLEMY, the author of the Periplus, and by MARCIANUS of Heraclæa. Palai-simundu, LASSEN conjectures to be derived from the Sanskrit Pali-simanta, "the head of the sacred law," from Ceylon having become the great centre of the Buddhist faith (De Taprob., p. 16; Indische Alter. vol. i. p. 200) ; and Salike he regards merely as a seaman's corruption of "Sinhala or Sihala," the name chosen by the Singhalese themselves, and signifying "the dwelling place of lions." ”

“ Mr Bennett is well aware that many men in many ages have protested against the possibility that Ceylon could realize all the conditions involved in the ancient Taprobane. Milton, it is true, with other excellent scholars, has insinuated his belief that probably Taprobane is Ceylon; when our Saviour in the wilderness sees the great vision of Roman power, expressed, inter alia, by high officers of the Republic flocking to, or from, the gates of Rome, and "embassies from regions far remote," crowding the Appian or the Emilian roads, some ”

“ The lion also gave its name to the island of Ceylon, which to the Greeks was known as Taprobane, from Tâmbapanni or Tâmrapani, the capital built by Vigaja, its first historical settler (said by the natives to come from tâmra, red, and pâni, hand, because he and his companions being worn out with fatigue on their arrival lay down upon the ground and found it made their hands red; but tamra (neut.) ”

“ These people look upon a hundred years as a comparatively short life. Thus much have we learned respecting Taprobane.
CHAP. 25.—THE ARIANI AND THE ADJOINING NATIONS.
We will now proceed to give some further particulars57 relative to the four Satrapies, of which we have postponed further mention407 till the present occasion.
(23) . After passing the nations in the vicinity of the Indus, we come to the mountain districts. The territory of Capisene formerly had a city, called Capisa,408 which was destroyed by Cyrus. Arachosia409 has a river and a city of the same name ”

“ For there is now no island which either can be, or can be supposed to be, Taprobanes, in the position in which Ptolemy, Pliny, and the other cosmographers placed it. Going thence, they arrived at the Golden Chersonesus, where now is situated that most famous city of Malacca, the greatest emporium of the East. After this they entered the Great Gulf, [3] which reaches as far as the country of the Sinæ, which they now call Schinæ, where they found a white and tolerably civilised people, like our Germans. They believe that the Seres and the Asiatic Scythians extend as far as there. ”

“ When night came Rekubole and Kauavira went secretly to their brothers, who lived in that village, and told them of the cruelty of Tauribolena, and begged them to put him for ever out of their way.
"Rest in peace, sisters," answered one of the men.
"We go on the morrow to the fields to mow the long grass, and Tauribolena shall not escape our scythes."
On the morrow, the brothers asked Tauribolena if he would go with them. He was willing, and soon the brothers were slashing with their wooden scythes, nigh to where Tauribolena stood. Swish! swish! ”

“ If a man who has a stone is going to it to offer, oloolo, upon it, and he sees a rat, crab, iguana, or lizard on the way, he scatters a little loose money for it, and says a tataro that he knows. When the oven is opened for a meal, one of the men will break off a bit of food and throw it against the side wall of the house with a tataro. In the same way when water is poured into the oven to make the steam, there is a tataro used against an enemy, or to get rain or sunshine. ”

“ At Tabora there had been overmuch time for thought, and the yearning for a far-away face must needs have been in the hearts of both those young Englishmen, whose bronzed features were sternly and steadily set with the resolute calm of men who do not mean to waste in despair and die for love of the fairest woman upon earth. ”

“ Artemidorus states that in the island of Taprobana, life is prolonged to an extreme length, while, at the same time, the body is exempt from weakness. Among the Calingæ, a nation also of India, the women marry at five years of age, and do not live beyond their eighth year. In other places again, there are men born with long hairy tails, and of remarkable swiftness of foot; while there are others that have ears so large as to cover the whole body. ”

“ Burton, Speke, and Grant years ago had visited it, and described it, came the Arab magnates from Tabora to congratulate me.
Tabora* is the principal Arab settlement in Central Africa. It contains over a thousand huts and tembes, and one may safely estimate the population, Arabs, Wangwana, and natives, at five thousand people. Between Tabora and the next settlement, Kwihara, rise two rugged hill ridges, separated from each other by a low saddle, over the top of which Tabora is always visible from Kwihara. ”

“ The tataro of the Banks' Islands, which may be called a prayer, is strictly an invocation of the dead, and is no doubt so called because the form begins with the word tataro, which certainly is the 'ataro of San Cristoval, that is a ghost of power. The Banks' islanders are clear that tataro is properly made only to the dead ”

“ Tarboe had gone on for many a year till his trade seemed like the romance of law rather than its breach. It is safe to say that Lafarge was a less sincere if not a less blameless customs officer from this time forth. For humour on a woman's lips is a potent thing, as any man knows that has kissed it off in laughter.
As we said, Tarboe lay rocking in a bight at Anticosti, with an empty hold and a scanty larder. Still, he was in no ill-humour, for he smoked much and talked more than common. Perhaps that was because Joan was with him—an unusual thing. ”

“ If a tafenai find that it had not been befittingly honoured at burial, it brings sickness to the household and will not desist until its dead body has been laid away with due lamentations and funeral songs, and the mach-mach man has pronounced a charm exhorting it to desist. It is the tafenai trying to escape out of the body that makes a person ill, and all the charms said over sick people are exhortations to the tafenai to remain; when a man is delirious, his tafenai has left his body and it may or may not be enticed to return. ”

“ In their manners they are occasionally so affected by a ridiculous reserve that one might be tempted to think that their brain is not quite sound. Talapoins, in general, entertain a very high idea of their own excellence; and the great respect paid to them by the people contributes not a little to foster it, and make them believe that nobody on earth can ever be compared to them. To such a height has their pride reached that they believe it would be derogatory to their dignity to return civility for civility, or thanks for the alms people bestow on them. ”

“ A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone, symmetrical and full of grace—a prominent landmark, and one that is exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of desert Syria. ”

“ In many North Travancore taluks the girl removes her tali as soon as she hears of the tali-tier’s death.” It is noted by the Rev. S. Mateer82 that “a Nair girl of Travancore must get married with the tāli before the age of eleven to avoid reproach from friends and neighbours. In case of need a sword may even be made to represent a bridegroom.” Sometimes, when a family is poor, the girl’s mother makes an idol of clay, adorns it with flowers, and invests her daughter with the tāli in the presence of the idol. ”

“ But Tlapa, the witch with long crooked nails and black teeth and ice-like eyes, learned of all this from the bats. Loving evil, and war, and violence, she was angry that another should come into the land to rule when the old king died, for she had long waited for the breath to pass from his body so that she might rule again. Seeing how the people greeted Maconahola, she became tight-lipped and slit-eyed. One night she went to Roraima, a place of rocks, where lived a wild man of terrible strength who sat in his cave all day, crouched over a fire of smoking green wood. ”

“ Meanwhile Lafarge saw how near he had been to losing a wife and a fortune. Arrived off Isle of Day; Tarboe told Mr. Martin and his men that if they said “treasure-trove” till they left the island their live would not be worth “a tinker's damn.” When they had sworn, he took them to Angel Point, fed then royally, gave them excellent liquor to drink, and sent them in a fishing-smack with Bissonnette to Quebec where, arriving, they told strange tales. ”

“ He plays boldly, and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think it won't be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business. ”

“ Tappan had seen her break off leaves of the prickly pear cactus, and stamp upon them with her forefeet, mashing off the thorns, so that she could consume the succulent pulp. She liked mesquite beans, and leaves of willow, and all the trailing vines of the desert. And she could subsist in an arid waste land where a man would have died in short order.
[8] No ascent or descent was too hard or dangerous for Jenet, provided it was possible of accomplishment. She would refuse a trail that was impassable. She seemed to have an uncanny instinct both for what she could do, and what was beyond a burro. ”

“ When a man sleeps, his tafenai escapes and wanders about playing all manner of queer pranks; in the morning when he awakes, it is the tafenai creeping back into his body through the nostrils that rouses him, wherefore a man so often wakes up sneezing or coughing. “A wise man has his tafenai in his head; a fool has it in his belly,” said Fatumak. ”

“ Their simplicity and absence of business-like habits have made them a prey to intrigue, fraudulence, and grievous neglect, and an unencumbered and well ordered estate is a rarity among Malabar Brāhmans, at least in Travancore."
The orthodox view of the Nambūtiri is thus stated in an official document of Travancore. "His person is holy; his directions are commands; his movements are a procession; his meal is nectar; he is the holiest of human beings; he is the representative of god on earth." ”

“ The Thebans encamped in a rising ground immediately opposite at no great distance, and were supported by no allies except the Boeotians.
5At this juncture the friends of Cleombrotus came to him and urged upon him strong reasons for delivering battle. "If you let the Thebans escape without a battle," they said, "you will run great risks of suffering the extreme penalty at the hands of the state. People will call to mind against you the time when you reached Cynoscephelae and did not ravage a square foot of Theban territory ”

“ But when there is light again upon the worlds, and dawn comes dancing down the highway from Pegāna, then does Triboogie retire into his corner, with his children all around him, as though they had never danced about the room. And the slaves of Habaniah and old Gribaun come and awake them from their sleep upon the hearth, and Pitsu strokes the cat, and Hobith calms the dog, and Kilooloogung stretches aloft his arms towards Pegāna, and Triboogie is very still, and his children asleep. ”

“ The Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” ”

“ About 300 M.E. a few male members were invited to settle in Travancore, and form marital alliances with the ladies of the Travancore Royal House, known then as the Vēnāt Svarūpam. Houses were built for them at Kilimānūr, six miles from Attingal, where all the female members of the Royal Family resided. In M.E. 963, eight persons — three males and five females — from the family of Āliakkōtu, oppressed by the invasion of Tīpū Sultan, sought shelter in Travancore. ”

“ Here Ulysses hid the treasures that the Phæacians had given him. The other cave need present no special features.
A man ascending the mountain from these caves, and keeping along the top of it should come to a place on ground commanding an extensive prospect, where there is a spring and a rock that is called Raven. This site must be bitterly cold in winter, and must be about two hours' walk from Trapani; the path to the town must be so rugged that a man in ordinary vigour would not like to take it without having a stick ”

“ THE MAN WHO COULD NOT BE KILLED.
In the old days, a great chief named Tauribolena lived in the mountains with his two wives, Rekubole, an old woman, and Kauavira, who was still young. It came to pass that one day he told them that they were to go with him to the sea shore, and he set out bearing his child, and the two women walked behind, carrying heavy bags of food, which were slung from their heads. ”