Many villages have markets on particular days, when not only fruits, grain, and the common necessaries of life are sold, but occasionally manufactures of various descriptions. These markets are well known to all the neighbouring country, being on appointed days of the {204} week, or of the lunar month; but, to remind those who may be travelling of their vicinity to the means of supply, a _naugaurah_, or large kettle-drum, is beat during the forenoon, and a small flag, usually of white linen, with some symbolic figure in colours, or with a coloured border, is hoisted on a very long bamboo, kept upright by means of ropes fastened to pins driven into the ground. The flags of Hindoo villages are generally square and plain; those of the Mussulmans towns are ordinarily triangular, and bear the type of their, religion, viz. a double-bladed scymitar.--_Oriental Sports_, vol. i. p. 100. _Mount Meru._--X. p. 93. According to the orthodox Hindus, the globe is divided into two hemispheres, both called _Meru_; but the superior hemisphere is distinguished by the name of _Sumeru_, which implies beauty and excellence, in opposition to the lower hemisphere, or _Cumeru_, which signifies the reverse: By _Meru_, without any adjunct, they generally mean the higher or northern hemisphere, which they describe with a profusion of poetic imagery as the seat of delights: while they represent _Cumeru_ as the dreary habitation of demons, in some parts intensely cold, and in others so hot that the waters are continually boiling. In strict propriety, Meru denotes the pole and the polar {205} regions; but it is the celestial north pole round which they place the gardens and metropolis of _Indra_, while _Yama_ holds his court in the opposite polar circle, or the Station of _Asuras_, who warred with the _Suras_, or gods of the firmament.--WILFORD. _Asiatic Researches_. In the _Vayu Puráná_, we are told, that the water, or _Ogha_ of the ocean, coming down from heaven like a stream of _Amrita_ upon _Meru_, encircles it through seven channels, for the space of 84,000 _Yojanas_, and then divides into four streams, which, falling from the immense height of Meru, rest themselves in four lakes, from which they spring over the mountains through the air, just brushing the summits. This wild account was not unknown in the west; for this passage is translated almost verbally, by Pliny and Q. Curtius, in speaking of the Ganges. _Cum magno fragore ipsius statim fontis Ganges erumpit_, et magnorum montium juga recto alveo stringit, _et ubi primum mollis planities contingat, in quodam lacu hospitatur_. The words in Italics are from Pliny (vi. c. 18.) the others from Curtius (viii. c. 9.)--Capt. WILFORD. _As. Res_. vol. viii. p. 322. Calcutta edition.