Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c17.s1.34

v1.c17.s1.34

³ Meru, ‘the hill,’ is used distinctively, as in Jaisalmer (the capital of the Bhatti tribe in the Western Desert), ‘the hill of Jaisal’; Merwara, or the ‘mountainous region’; and its inhabitants Meras, or ‘mountaineers.’ Thus, also, in the grand epic the Ramayana (Book i. p. 236), Mena is the mountain-nymph, the daughter of Meru and spouse of Himavat; from whom sprung two daughters, the river goddess Ganga and the mountain-nymph Parbati. She is, in the Mahabharata, also termed Saila, the daughter of Sail, another designation of the snowy chain; and hence mountain streams are called in Sanskrit silletee [?]. Saila bears the same attributes with the Phrygian Cybele, who was also the daughter of a mountain of the same name; the one is carried, the other drawn, by lions. Thus the Greeks also metamorphosed Parbat Pamer, or ‘the mountain Pamer,’ into Paropamisan, applied to the Hindu Koh west of Bamian: but the Parbat pat Pamer, or ‘Pamer chief of hills,’ is mentioned by the bard Chand as being far east of that tract, and under it resided Hamira, one of the great feudatories of Prithwiraja of Delhi. Had it been Paropanisan (as some authorities write it), it would better accord with the locality where it takes up the name, being near to Nyssa and Meru, of which Parbat or Pahar would be a version, and form Paronisan, ‘the Mountain of Nyssa,’ the range Nishadha of the Puranas. [The true form is Paropanisos: the suggested derivation is impossible.]