TANSY. The deep green leaves and yellow flowers have a strong aromatic smell and a bitter taste. The leaves contain a volatile oil and the younger ones have been used for flavoring puddings, cakes, omelets, etc., and were formerly used in medicine, but are rarely used even in domestic practice. Some curious Easter customs linger in many parts of England connected with the use of tansy cakes and puddings which were originally intended to represent the use of bitter herbs at the paschal feast. See Chambers's Book of Days. TANTA, tlin'ta. or TANTAH. The capital of the Province of Gharbieh, Lower Egj'pt, sit- uated in the Delta, about 60 miles north of Cairo (Map: Eg}-pt, E 2). It has a palace of the Khedive and a fine mosque, and is noted for its fairs and festivals, which are visited by thou- sands of Moslem pilgrims and traders. Popula- tion, in 1900, 35,000. TANTALITE (from Neo-Lat. tanUdum, tan- talum). A niiiirral iron tantalate crystallized in the orthorliombie system. It has a sub- metallic and often brilliant lustre, and is brown to iron-black in color. It occurs in granitic and feldspathic veins in the form of crystalline granules and cleavable masses, and is found in Finland, Bavaria, Italy, Western South America, and Greenland, and in the United States at vari- ous localities along the Appalachian Mountain system, in Colorado, and in the Black Hill region. The iron in this mineral is frequently re])laced by manganese, giving rise to a variety known as maiignnoUinlalitc. TANTALUM (Neo-Lat., from Lat. Tantalus, father of Niohe; so called from its close resem- blance to the metal niobium) . A metallic element discovered by Ekeberg in 1802. It occurs associated with columbates in the rare minerals columbite, tantalite and yttrotantalite. Its separation is by a long and complicated chemical metliod, and the product obtained is believed to be an impure mixture of oxides. Tantalum (symbol, Ta; atomic weight, 182.84) is a black powder that assumes an iron-gray metallic lustre under a burnisher, and when gently heated ignites in the air and burns, forming the oxide. It also com- bines with oxygen to form a pentoxide, which in turn combines with bases to form a series of salts called tantalaics. TAN'TALUS (Lat.. from Gk. Td^raXoj). In Greek legend. King of the region about Mount Sipyhis in Lydia, son of Zeus and father by Dione of Pelops (q.v.), Broteas, and Niob'e (q.v.). He was a favorite of Zeus and was ad- mitted to the gatherings of the gods, but offend- ed grievously in some way and was in conse- quence visited with extreme punishments, so that he became one of the t^-pical figures in Tartarus. There Tantalus was plunged into a deep pool, whose waters receded whenever he stooped to drink, while over his head hung clusters of fruit which were ever kept just beyond his reach. An- other version represented him as poised in the air, beneath a huge rock which constantly threat- ened to fall and crush him. TANTIA TOPI, tan'te-ft to'pe (C.1S12-59). An Indian military commander, conspicuous in the Sepoy mutiny of 1857-58. He was born at Bithur, near Cawnpore. He became the chief lieutenant of Nana Sahib (q.v.) in 1857. After the defeat of Nana Sahib by Havelook. Tantia 26 TANTTJM EBGO. Topi conducted the campaign alone until the flight of his superior into Oudh and Nepal made communication impossible. He then acted under the orders of Rao Sahib, nephew of Nana Sahib. It was due to his generalship alone that the rebellion continued after the cap- ture of Gwalior by Sir Hugh Rose and the death of the Rani of .Ihansi, in June of 1858. For nine months he baffled the English in Centr ' India, suffering his first serious reverse at biKar in January, 1859. The rebels were finally dispersed in March, 1859, and Tantia Topi, who had taken refuge in the jungles of Paron, was lietrayed ( April 7 ) to Major Meade by his own friend and late associate Man Singh. He was tried by court martial at Sipri and lianged there on April IS, 1859. TANTBA, tan'tra (Skt,, ceremony, woof, from tan, to stretch, to weave). The Sanskrit term for a ceremony or a ceremonial treatise, and thus for a systematic treatise of any kind. The word is used in English, however, only as the designation of a late class of Sanskrit works which are related to the Puranas (see Purana) on the one hand, and to the magic literature in general on the other (see the section Atharvaveda under Veda). The Tantras are in the main the sacred works of the worshipers of the androgy- nous Siva (q.v.) , or of Sakti, the female principle itself (see Saktas). They deal with the creation and destruction of the world, the worship of the gods, the attainment of all objects, magical rites for the acquirement of six superhuman faculties, and four modes of union with spirit by medita- tion. Prayers to the gods, especially Siva, some few of great beauty, are comparatively rare. Their place is taken by a condensed form of in- vocation of the divinity by means of a great variety of honorific epithets, one class, the 'thousand-name prayers,' forming a division by itself. There are also prayers in the form of amulets, which contain magic and invocation in their very form, and are therefore regarded as especially efficacious. Numerous other subjects are introduced into many Tantras, while certain ones are limited to a single topic, as the mode of breathing in certain rites, or the language of birds and beasts. Siva and his wife. Devi. Uma, or Parvati, are the chief divinities of the Tantras, which are nearly always composed in the form of a dialogue between them, in which the goddess questions the god as to the mode of performing various ceremonies, and the mantras or praj'crs and incantations to be ised in them. These he explains at length, and under solemn cautions that they involve a great mystery, not to be divulged to the profane. The followers of the Tantras consider them as a fiftli Veda, and at- tribute to them corresponding antiquity. This claim is entirely imaginary'; they are mentioned in some of the Puranas, and are probably later than the lexicographer Amarasinha (q.v.), who lived several centuries after the Ijeginning of the Christian Era. No less than sixty-four Tantras are mentioned by the Hindu commentator Sankara (q.v.), yet this important branch of Sanskrit literature has been scarcely studied by Western scholars, nor is there, even in India, any edited text or translation of a single work of this class. TANTTJM ERGO. The last two stanzas of the hynm Pange lingua, which are invariably
