Saman

“ How could it be that among so many learned men, among so many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy men, no one will find the path of paths? ”

“ SAMI.—The Indians employ the wood of Sami (Mimosa Suma) a species of Acacia for the production of fire in their sacrifices. For this purpose they rub a stick of Asvattha (representing the male element) against a stick of the Acacia Sami (regarded as the female symbol) , in accordance with the Indian legend which relates how Pururavas, the Indian Prometheus, created fire by rubbing two woods together. At Indian weddings, after the sacrifice has been made, the husband and wife take in their hands some Rice (symbol of abundance) and some leaves of Sami (symbol of generation) . ”

“ Samāra, C. 710. Sa for Saha, with; Māra, an enemy: having the passions unsubdued.
Samarang, the second town in rank on Java, Batavia being the first, and Sourabaya the third. It is probably derived from the name of the Indian Cupid Samara, with the Polynesian Ng suffixed.
Samas, four hundred. The number 400. An ancient method of counting Chinese cash. Samas is equal to 16 Dutch doits. See Salawé, Sawé, Satus, Satak, Séwei and Mas.
Sambal, any savoury condiment to eat with rice, mostly made up with capsicum; capsicum or chillies pounded up into a paste to eat with food. This is very pungent. ”

“ Half an hour later, topping a dune like a small hill, Sam suddenly whirled his camel, made the beast kneel, then lie down as he leapt off to take cover. Just beyond, in a shallow valley, stretched the huts of a large native village. And Sam's first glance had caught one triple-sized, high-roofed wurley, surely more commodious than any Parrabarra or Arunta aborigine ever built. ”

“ The next morning when the guard of the royal garden went to his post, he saw, near the well, a beautiful mawk moo flower, took it home with him and placed it in the chattie of water that every Shan keeps in his house as an offering to the hpeas. The old mother Nai, soon after took her basket and went to the bazaar to buy puc for her son's breakfast, but when she returned she was surprised to see that during her absence some one had swept the house, cooked the food, and that the [76] "morning rice" was all ready to eat. ”

“ Fifty years before, Black Sam had a little hut so far down among the rocks of the Sound that it seemed as if every high tide must wash it away. He was a hard-working young man, as active as a cat, and was a labourer at a farm on the island. In the summer evenings, when his work was done, he would hasten down to the shore and remove his light boat and go out to fish, and there was not a corner of the Sound that he did not know, from the Hen and Chickens to the Hog's Back, from the Hog's Back to the Pot, and from the Pot to the Frying Pan. ”

“ It is the Tree of Intelligence, and grows in the third heaven, over which it spreads its mighty branches; beneath it Yama and the Pitris dwell, and quaff the immortalising Soma with the gods. At its foot grow plants of all healing virtue, incorporations of the Soma. Two birds sit on its top, one of which eats Figs, whilst the other simply watches. Other birds press out the Soma juice from its branches. This ambrosial tree, besides dropping the precious Soma, bears fruit and seed of every kind known in the world. ”

“ Sam looked at him in awe, for he wore his exalted look, and when he spoke like that Sam had a superstitious fear that perhaps after all he was as old Sal said, more of angel than of man.
“And then, there’s the earth, all covered with green, plenty of it to lie in if you want to, and it smells so good; and there’s so much air,—enough to breathe your lungs full, and with nothing disagreeable in it, no ugly smells nor sounds. And there are growing things everywhere. Oh, Sam! Wouldn’t you like to make things like this grow?” ”

“ At the summit of this he paused to take his last general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his way by the prairie-dweller’s instinct, guided only by an occasional glimpse of a far distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or the position of the sun.
Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra. ”

“ Brush past my soul impatiently;
I saw the bloom on flower and tree
That only grows beyond the sea.
Methought the distant voices spake
More wisdom than near tongues can make;
I followed—lest my heart should break.
And what is past is past and done.
I dreamt, and here the dream begun:
I saw a salmon in the sun
Leap from the river to the shore—
Ah! strange mishap, so wounded sore,
To his sweet stream to turn no more.
A bird from ’neath his mother’s breast,
Spread his weak wings in vain request ”

“ Fulfil our vows in battle, fight for us! None can resist thee; give us superiority! O Soma immortal! May we drink to thee and be immortal like thee!' Mr. Baring-Gould says that the whole legend of Soma is but the allegorical history of the plant Sarcostemma viminalis, which is associated with passionate love 'because of the intoxicating liquor which is derived from its juice. ”

“ Then in the evening when the black woman came along, going after the cows, the children would race ahead and set the cows running and jingling their bells—especially Little Sam, for he was a wild-headed, impetuous child of sudden ecstasies that sent him capering and swinging his arms, venting his emotions in a series of leaps and shrieks and somersaults, and spasms of laughter as he lay rolling in the grass. ”

“ Sammy’s eyes were large and round, and he could see splendidly, especially when the water was clear. His hearing, as well as his sense of smell was also good, and he breathed through the gills on each side of his throat. When taken out of the water the fish really dies of suffocation, for the water that enters its throat and flows out through the gills is the air that keeps it alive. ”

“ As the Soma, the world-tree becomes in Indian mysticism a tree of Paradise, at once the king of all trees and vegetation, and the god Soma to be adored. It furnishes the divine ambrosia or essence of immortality, concealed sometimes in the clouds, sometimes in the billows of the soft and silvery light that proceeds from the great-Soma, the great Indu, the moon. Hence this mystic tree, from the foliage of which drops the life-giving Soma, is sometimes characterised as the Hindu Moon-Tree. Out of this cosmogonic tree the immortals shaped the heaven and the earth. ”

“ To this watchfulness Sammy owed his escape from the Sea-Devil. This treacherous creature makes its home in the mud, which it stirs up in order the better to conceal itself. While thus hidden, it waves about in the cloudy water two long, slender feelers, which to an unwary fish look like some tempting article of food. ”

“ The houses in the Shan villages along the river-banks are situated in orchards of fine fruit-trees, separated from each other by palisades. The people, like the Burmese, are very fond of flowers, and rear them in their gardens, and in wooden boxes and earthenware pots placed on the balustrade of their verandahs. Young children encircle the top-knot on the head with orchids and sweet-smelling flowers. ”

“ In Indian file we were led by Sam around the hill, up a steep path that was bordered by coral-strung buck-bushes and rasping blackberry brush, and to his little farm-house perched on a plateau almost up to the top of the hill. It was long and low, with a wide red roof that seemed to hover in the whitewashed walls and green shutters; while white smoke from an old gray-rock, mud-daubed chimney melted away among the tree-tops into the lavender of the coming day. ”

“ The little fellow is daily learning that everything that grows comes from a seed, even the salmon which was eaten at lunch yesterday was the text for an impressive story about Papa and Mamma Salmon. In the beautiful Columbia river Mother Salmon is swimming about quietly seeking a shallow place in the stream where she may deposit her cluster of baby seeds, which looks very much like a mass of tapioca pudding as they gently sink to the bed of a shallow spot in the river. ”

“ When they are cut open their flesh is pink, and all the other fish have white flesh. King Salmon was taking a little exercise one day, dashing about in the salt sea or sailing up the river, perhaps, when he ran his great stupid head into a net, and the more he struggled the worse it was, and strong as he was—as strong as a fairly big dog—he could not break that net, and so he was hauled out and brought to shore, where he died. ”

“ Two miles up from where it enters the sea, on the east side, is the neck of a plain, which grows wider and wider as it extends back. It looks from the point where I am as if it were of scores and scores of acres. Thence, on the east side, as far as I can see, there is a ridge of mountains. On the west side of the river, a plain of a quarter to half a mile wide. This is a great salmon river, and so known in this country among the Innuits. At our encampment I picked up the vertebræ of a salmon, the same measuring twenty-one inches, and a piece of the tail gone at that. ”

“ Each genus has only a small number of species. Sesamum, in the widest sense of the name,2099 has ten, all African except perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum, which is a section in Bentham and Hooker’s work. Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the area of a considerable number of plants is known to extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has two races, the one with black, the other with white seed, and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf. ”

“ We left this hill tract by a very narrow ravine, between banks of conglomerate and ridges of friable slate, and descended a long stony slope on to the plain of Samnán, and crossing its bare, parched, stony desert surface, camped at a kárez stream under the shade of some mulberry-trees to the north of the town. The plain wears a desolate uninviting look, and is suggestive of unpleasant heat in summer. ”

“ Sam, means 'when you hear, it shakes,' signifying that the thunder reverberates from the heights owing to its steep side and gives it a tremulous motion. This abrupt, cliff-like side is the western, where the schistose gneiss is exposed for a thickness of 60 feet and more: the stone is talcose, puddinged in places with quartz pebbles, and everywhere showing laminations of black sand. The long oval mound of red clay, overgrown with trees, and rising 295 feet above sea-level, is all auriferous; but there are placers richer than their neighbours. ”

“ At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are becoming smaller;—there are no more colossal trunks;—there are frequent glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, and sends occasional beams down through the leaves. Ten minutes, and we reach a clear space,—a wild savane, very steep, above which looms a higher belt of woods. ”

“ But it happened that among the grass which he had cut was a herb, which possessed the power of raising the dead to life. By means of the juice of this herb the female swan was restored to life, and before his eyes she flung off the grass, and flew up into the sky, and disappeared. ”

“ Their hue near at [164] hand is a glowing brown; in the distance an intense violet. On the western bank they are lower; and the sand of that vast Desert, which stretches unbroken to the Atlantic, has heaped itself over their shoulders and poured long drifts and rills even to the water. In color it is a tawny gold, almost approaching a salmon tint, and its glow at sunrise equals that of the snow-fields of the Alps.
The arable land is a mere hem, a few yards in breadth on either side of the river. ”

“ Sam listened, his gnarled mahogany hand across his mouth, his shrewd gray eyes bent attentively on the cabalistic signs and scratches. An Indian will remember, from once traversing it, not only the greater landmarks, but the little incidents of bowlder, current, eddy, strip of woods, bend of trail. It remains clear-cut in his mind forever after. The old woodsman had in his long experience acquired something of this faculty. ”

“ So there in the sand he scooped out with his tail a smooth round place, and his companion came and filled it with orange-colored eggs. Then our salmon came back again; and softly covering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, and, in the old salmon fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream.
They drifted on together for a night and a day, but they never came to the sea. For the salmon has but one life to live, and it ascends the river but once. The rest lies with its children. And when the April sunshine fell on the globules in the gravel, these were wakened into life. ”

“ She forgot the shrew-mice, and thought only of the great salmon that Nial declared slept or lay waiting night and day under a ledge at the bottom of the linn. Yes; she would steal across the rocks, and creep in among the boulders, and lie along the lowest ledge that sloped to the seething hollow, whose black depths, and the deafening noise of whose tumult, had ever an irresistible fascination for her. ”

“ Such merry times as Sammy and his companions had chasing each other up and down the stream, leaping the waterfall, jumping over the rocks, and playing hide-and-seek in the shallows. Then there was always the excitement of watching for the flies and different insects that hovered near, and which made delicious meals when caught. The young salmon used to boast of the flies they had captured, just as boys and men do of their luck in fishing.
But our hero soon grew tired of this quiet life. ”