The Classical Accounts of India c18.8

c18.8

XIII. 18. In the Indian royal palace where the greatest of all the kings of the country resides, besides much else which is calculated to excite admiration, and with which neither Memnonian Susa with all its costly splendour, nor Ekbatana with all its magnificence can vie (for, methinks, only the well-known vanity of the Persians could prompt such a comparison), there are other wonders besides, which I cannot undertake to describe in this treatise. In the parks tame peacocks are kept, and pheasants which have been domesticated; and among cultivated plants there are some to which the king's servants attend with special care, for there are shady groves and pasture-grounds plated with trees, and branches of trees which the art of woodsman has deftly interwoven. And these very trees, from the unusual benignity of the climate, are ever in bloom, and, untouched by age, never shed their leaves; and while some are native to the soil, others are with circumspect care brought from other parts, and with their beauty enhance the charms of the landscape. The olive is not of the number, this being a tree which is neither indigenous to India, nor thrives when transported thither. Birds and other animals that wander at freedom and have never been tamed resort of themselves to India and there build their nests and form their lairs. Parrots are natives of the country, and keep hovering about the king and wheeling round him, and vast though their numbers be, no Indian ever eats a parrot. The reason of all this is that they are believed to be sacred and that the Brachmans honour them highly above all other birds. They assign a specious enough reason for their doing so—namely, that the parrot alone, from the admirable conformation of its vocal organs, can imitate human speech. Within the palace ground there are also artificial ponds of great beauty in which they keep fish of enormous size but quite tame. No one has permission to fish for these except the king's sons while yet in their boyhood. These youngsters amuse themselves without the least risk of being drowned while fishing in the unruffled sheet of water and learning how to sail their boats.³