"A woman's hair, _Huzoor_. It is always the hair of a woman who has died, but whose child has lived, that is used for Mai Âtma's crown. Shall I tell the story, _Huzoor?_" "Was she beautiful?" I asked irrelevantly, why I know not. "I do not know, _Huzoor_," he replied. "Am I not blind?" The answer struck me as irrelevant also, but I went on idly, feeling, in truth, but small interest in what I was convinced must be some hackneyed tale I had heard a hundred times before, since I was given to the hearing of tales. "Is it about this place?" I asked. He shook his head again. "I do not know, _Huzoor_. It is about Mai Âtma. Shall I tell the story?" "You seem to know very little about the story, I must say. How do you know it is about Âtma?" He smiled broadly. "It is about Mai Âtma, sure enough. The _Huzoor_ will see that if he lets me tell the tale." I clinked a rupee down among the jasmine flowers and bid him fire away, and be quick about it. He began instantly, plunging without any preface into a curiously rhythmed chant, the very first line of which gave pathetic answer to my irrelevant question, and at the same time showed the cause of the old man's ignorance. It ran thus:-- "O world which she has left, forget not she was fair." Vain appeal when made in the oldest known form of Arya-Pali--the dialect in which the edicts of Asoka are carved--and of which not one man in ten million, even in India, knows the very existence. I happened to be one of the few, and though at the time I could naturally only gather the general outline of the chant, I subsequently took it down word for word from the old man's lips. Some passages still remain obscure; there are yawning gaps in the narrative, but taking it all in all, it is a singularly clear bit of tradition, preserved, as it were, by the complete ignorance of those who passed the words from lip to lip. Roughly translated, it runs thus:-- "O world she left, forget not she was fair; so very fair. Her small kind face so kind. Straight to the eyes it looked, then smiled or frowned. About her slender throat were gold-blue stones. Gold at her wrists; the gold hem of her gown slid like a snake along the marble floor, coiled like a snake upon the water's edge. "By night she asked the stars, by day the sun, what they would have her do. "I was her servant sitting at her door, Watching her small feet kiss the marble floor; Reading the water mirror's heaven-learnt lore. "O world she left, remember she was Queen! "For Âtma ruled a queen ere she was born, her widowed mother wasting nine long months to give her life ere following the King. "O Âtma mâta! strike thy servant blind, He and his sons for ever, lest they find Thy face within the crown their fingers bind. "Hark! how her voice comes echoing through the Hall, 'Who hath a claim to-day 'gainst me or mine?' (There was a dainty jewel at her breast, kept time in sparkles to her lightest word.)