The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.120

v1.c9.120

⁴⁹ The epithet has puzzled the commentators sorely. Lord Derby translates it into "stag-eyed". Others, I learn from Professor Tawney, have rendered it into "large-eyed", "round-eyed", "beautiful-faced", "exceedingly-well-shaped", "good-looking", "cow-faced", "cow-eyed", &c. The reference to the cow is accounted for on the supposition of Io being the moon, "changed by Hera into a cow, the usual symbol of the horned moon. The ordinarily received meaning is "large", The *Lalita-vistara*, however, gives a clue to its true signification. Among the thirty-two signs of greatness which marked the person of Śākya it reckons "eyes deeply black like the eyelash and eye of a cow", (Go-*pakṣma-netrābhinīla-netra*), which has been translated by Mr. Foucaux from the Tibetan into "L'oeil grand, blanc et noir". This is exactly equal to the term *melanophthalmos* which Didymus, the scholiast of Homer, gives, as one of his alternative meanings. It is the blackness of the goddess' eyes which Homer praised, and not their size or roundness.