Water for the feet is one of the first things invariably provided for a guest in all Eastern countries.  Compare Genesis xxiv. 32; Luke vii. 44.  If the guest were a Brahman, or a man of rank, a respectful offering (argha) of rice, fruit, and flowers was next presented.  In fact, the rites of hospitality in India were enforced by very stringent regulations.  The observance of them ranked as one of the five great sacred rites, and no punishment was thought too severe for one who violated them.  If a guest departed unhonoured from a house, his sins were to be transferred to the householder, and all the merits of the householder were to be transferred to him.

26. Sapta-parna tree.

A tree having seven leaves on a stalk (Echites scholaris).

27. Vis’]wamitra, whose family name is Kausika.

In the Ramayana, the great sage Vi[s’]wamitra (both king and saint), who raised himself by his austerities from the regal to the Brahmanical caste, is said to be the son of Gadhi, King of Kanuj, grandson of Kusanatha, and great-grandson of Kusika or Kusa.  On his accession to the throne, in the room of his father Gadhi, in the course of a tour through his dominions, he visited the hermitage of the sage Vasishtha, where the Cow of Plenty, a cow granting all desires, excited his cupidity.  He offered the sage untold treasures for the cow; but being refused, prepared to take it by force.  A long war ensued between the king and the sage (symbolical of the struggles between the military and Brahmanical classes), which ended in the defeat of Vi[s’]wamitra, whose vexation was such, that he devoted himself to austerities, in the hope of attaining the condition of a Brahman.  The Ramayana recounts how, by gradually increasing the rigour of his penance through thousands of years, he successively earned the title of Royal Sage, Sage, Great Sage, and Brahman Sage.  It was not till he had gained this last title that Vasishtha consented to acknowledge his equality with himself, and ratify his admission into the Brahmanical state.  It was at the time of Vi[s’]wamitra’s advancement to the rank of a Sage, and whilst he was still a Kshatriya, that Indra, jealous of his increasing power, sent the nymph Menaka to seduce him from his life of mortification and continence.  The Ramayana records his surrender to this temptation, and relates that the nymph was his companion in the hermitage for ten years, but does not allude to the birth of [S’]akoontala during that period.

28. The inferior gods, I am aware, are jealous.

According to the Hindu system, Indra and the other inferior deities were not the possessors of Swarga, or heaven, by indefeasible right.  They accordingly viewed with jealousy, and even alarm, any extraordinary persistency by a human being in acts of penance, as it raised him to a level with themselves; and, if carried beyond a certain point, enabled him to dispossess them of Paradise.  Indra was therefore the enemy of excessive self-mortification, and had in his service numerous nymphs who were called his ‘weapons,’ and whose business it was to impede by their seductions the devotion of holy men.