Everything that is written in the Koran itself is supposed to have been brought direct from God by the angel Gabriel.[15]

Notes: 

1.  In planting mango groves, it is a rule that they shall be as far from each other as not to admit of their branches ever meeting.  ‘Plant trees, but let them not touch’ (’Am lagao, nis lagen nahin’) is the maxim. [W.  H. S.]

2. Pakka; the word here means ‘cemented with lime mortar’, and not only with mud (kachcha).

3.  The chambeli is known in science as the Jasminum grandiflorum, and the mango-tree as Mangifera Indica.

4.  A small principality west of Riwa, and 110 miles north-west of Jubbulpore.  It is also known as Nagaudh, or Nagod.

5.  Compare the account of the marriage of the tulasi shrub (Ocymum sanctum) with the salagram stone, or fossil ammonite, in Chapter 19, post.

6.  There is a sublime passage in the Psalms of David, where the lightning is said to be the arrows of God.  Psalm lxxvii: 
 17, ’The clouds poured out water:  the skies sent out a sound:  thine
arrows also went abroad.
 18.  The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings
lightened the world:  the earth trembled and shook.’ [W.  H. S.]
 The passage is quoted from the Authorized Bible version; the Prayer
Book version is finer.

7.  ’We guard them from every devil driven away with stones; except him who listeneth by stealth, at whom a visible flame is darted.’  Koran, chapter 15, Sale’s translation.  See post, end of this chapter.

8.  Nine Hindoos out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, throughout India, believe the rainbow to arise from the breath of the snake, thrown up from the surface of the earth, as water is thrown up by whales from the surface of the ocean. [W.  H. S,]

9. ’Mishkat is a hole in a wall in which a lamp is placed, and Masabih the plural of “a lamp”, because traditions are compared to lamps, and this book is like that which containeth a lamp.  Another reason is, that Masabih is the name of a book, and this book comprehends its contents’ (Matthews’s translation, vol. i, p. v, note).

10.  The full title is Mishkat-ul-Masabih, or a Collection of the most Authentic Traditions regarding the Actions and Sayings of Muhammed; exhibiting the Origin of the Manners and Customs; the Civil, Religious, and Military Policy of the Muslemans.  Translated from the original Arabic by Captain A. N. Matthews, Bengal Artillery.  Two vols. 4to; Calcutta, 1809-10, This valuable work, published by subscription, is now very scarce.  A fine copy is in the India Office Library.

11.  Book xxi, chapter 3, part i; vol. ii, p. 384.  The quotations as given by the author are inexact.  The editor has substituted correct extracts from Matthews’s text.  Matthews spells the name of the prophet’s widow as Aayeshah.